Why I (Generally) Prefer Asynchronous Online Learning

It feels like the scramble is on! So many educators are planning and preparing for fall, and now that August is just around the corner, it's starting to feel "really real"--and the pressure is rising on doing things well.

In July I presented a series of webinars about different aspects of online teaching and learning, as so many schools are working to boost their teachers' skills at leveraging distance teaching techniques. I am pleased that so many folks are "hoping for the best but planning for the worst." (I'm not convinced, personally, that teaching online is "the worst," but I know what they mean when they say this.) Over 500 teachers participated in the series of webinars, which was personally gratifying for me, but more than that, so many of them expressed gratitude for the sharing of tips and techniques to boost their skills.

But as a result, I have had a fair number of people reach out to me recently to ask about synchronous vs. asynchronous online learning, and which I would recommend. Synchronous online learning would be things like having class via live web conference (like the now ubiquitous Zoom.) Asynchronous online learning would be...almost anything else, that doesn't require students to all login at the same time. Overall, I am generally in favor of asynchronous online learning as a guiding principle, using synchronous meetings on an as-needed basis to support the asynchronous learning environment.

Why is that, you might ask? A school leader from an independent school in California recently emailed me to ask the same question. Here's part of what he said:

I've noticed over the past couple weeks the majority of private schools in this area start to release plans for distance learning.  Most of these plans involve students going through their schedules virtually.  In other words, if first period is from 8:30-9:15, the kids will attend a ZOOM session or Google Meets session for 45 minutes, and then transition to period 2.  Some schools are abbreviating their schedules a bit, but still having their kids attend 4-5 hours of live instruction via their chromebooks each day.  In watching your videos, you've made a few comments about favoring asynchronous instruction and limiting synchronous instruction.  This tends to be my view as well, but I'm curious if you would be willing to spell out your reasons for this a bit more.  Curious about your thoughts on the type of schedule I outlined above as well.  Finally, if you have any good resources which delve into the synchronous/asynchronous question, I'd be interested as well.
 

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

I definitely have opinions about this! I hope that these opinions are generally grounded in research and reflect promising practices, but this is a case of "pretty-sure-most-of-the-time, but-open-to-revision-as-I-keep-learning, and somewhere-on-the-road-to-sanctification." Here is part of what I emailed back in response:

You’re right; I do generally advocate for asynchronous instruction. The reasoning for this is three-fold:

1. There is a fairly substantial (and growing) body of research that suggests that web-conference (e.g., Zoom) meetings are more psychologically taxing than face-to-face meetings, because of the extra cognitive load of trying to manage the weirdness of the
2. Planning for the majority of teaching to be via synchronous instruction demands that teachers and students have a massive amount of screentime every day, and this leads to an equity problem for some (but certainly not all) students. In the case of schools that have a 1:1 program with Chromebooks or other devices, this is less of a problem, assuming that there is robust internet access at every home. But there are quite a few schools that leave families to their own devices (literally)—which might mean students needing to share a limited number of devices. Bandwidth is an issue for many families as well. Anecdotally, we found this the hard way this past spring, as we don’t have super-fast internet access at home, and with my wife and me and both of our kids all working online at the same time we often found frustration, particularly when it came to uploading files.
3. Beyond the equity question, I’d rather have students doing a variety of different things throughout the day instead of just listening to teachers talk on Zoom. I think of this as the pedagogy question: what do we believe effective pedagogy looks like? If sit-n-get, lecture dominated instruction is the go-to strategy, replacing this with a series of live Zoom meetings makes some sense. But if we view real learning as more than information-transfer…having a variety of tools in the pedagogical toolbox is probably a better strategy. Live meetings can be part of the mix, and I would say the are valuable! But they aren’t the only strategy. I always go back to John Van Dyk’s 60% rule: “No teaching strategy should be used more than 60% of the time or it becomes ineffective.” I think this is true irrespective of whether we’re teaching in a face-to-face classroom or an online classroom.

 
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts on this. I am glad to hear you thinking this through! It’s not easy for school leaders to have to make these decisions, for sure. And when you add to the mix the fact that most teachers have been prepared for, practiced in, and been resourced and equipped for teaching in face-to-face classrooms, the pivot to teaching in an online classroom feels all the more daunting.
 

Blessings to you as you continue to make preparations for the new year!

What do you think? Do you have strong preferences for synchronous or asynchronous online learning? Which do you prefer, and why?

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

 

When Should We Go Digital?

I'm teaching a course this semester ambitiously entitled "Teaching and Learning with Technology." It'a actually the...eighth time I've taught it, and I have it almost dialed in where I want it at this point. (But it's always a process of refinement, you know? Always becoming, and never arriving...)

A perennial question that comes up at some point each time I teach the course is along the lines of, "When should we use technology, and when should we avoid it?"

I love it when students start asking that question. All too often, I think we assume that technology is somehow going automatically improve teaching and learning. But I think that "when should we use technology" might be the wrong question, honestly. Probably this has to do with the fact that I tend to take a very broad view of technology; sure, computers and tablets and projectors are technologies. But so are books, and pencils, and crayons, and paper, and white boards, and scented markers, and play-doh, and protractors, and juggling balls, and...well, you get the idea? We use an awful lot of different kinds of tools to support and encourage students to learn. Some are digital. Some are not.

So the way I'd like to reframe this question is, "When should we go digital?" Here too, there are probably a variety of answers, and it's not always clear.

But tonight I was in on a Twitter chat with one of my all-time favorite groups of Ttweeting teachers, #iaedchat (Iowa Educators Chat--but there's a lot of folks from beyond Iowa who join in.) Tonight's chat centered around this idea of leadership and learning in digitally-enhanced learning environments. As part of the chat, one of my long-time Twitterfriends, Devin Schoening, shared this wisdom:

I've always had 3 Qs I use when working w/teachers re dig tools. 1. Does it make something more efficient? 2. Does it enhance something you are already doing? 3. Does it making something possible that otherwise wouldn't be? Have to be able to answer at least one "yes". #iaedchat

— Devin Schoening (@dschoening) February 24, 2020

I love this! Great advice, Devin. I'm going to pass this along to my students, and hopefully we'll continue to spread this wisdom into lots more schools as well.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Economics and Grading

So I saw a tweet yesterday that included the following graphic from my long-time Twitterfriend, Paul Munshower.

My first reaction was to laugh, and I did chuckle.

But, almost immediately, I stopped and checked that reaction. Oh, not because this is untrue...it probably is a really accurate way of framing that feeling. (And, yes...as a professional educator, I have had that feeling checking my balance with my bank...which is a comment on the state of compensation for teachers...but not the real point of this post.)

The main reason I checked myself is the idea that this comment conveys: that grades are like money in the bank, deposits from your earnings.

Now I know there are plenty of people who would equate grades as "earnings," as in, "Students earn their grades."

But I do wonder a bit about this metaphor. Are we really comfortable with thinking about grades as compensation? I'm not loving this idea, honestly. I know, I know...we use this language all the time. But what is a grade, really? Is it payment for the work students do? Or...is it meant to be communication about their learning?

I suppose if you're viewing grades as pay for the work students do, there isn't any problem here. Students put in their time, do what they are asked to do, and get their paycheck. Worked hard? You get an A! Not working quite as hard? B+ for you, kiddo. Just coasting and not really doing the work? D- for you. And I guess the idea here is that compensation matches the effort; kids who are really working hard are going to get better "pay," while the kids who are coasting are going to get worse "pay." That's how the "real world" works, after all, right? People who work hard get raises, and lazy people never get ahead...and might even lose their jobs, yeah? Grades viewed this way are really an economic proposition.

But here's what makes me uncomfortable with this: I don't think grades are actually pay. Grades should be communication about what kids have learned, ideally. I don't think they are actually all that great for this purpose, because you lose all the nuance by trying to collapse a whole term's learning into one letter or number. Regardless...if we start trying to turn this communication into payment...are we really communicating learning anymore?

And I don't think that kids who just "work hard" are going to get high marks while lazy students are going to get low scores. I'm not arguing against developing a work ethic; I think everyone agrees that we want kids to learn how to work. But I'm standing here in opposition to the idea that kids who work hard deserve good grades just because they have worked hard. I mean, you can "work really hard" at doing the wrong thing and not end up making any progress. If we're basing kids' grades on whether or not they worked hard, what are we actually assessing? Their work habits? Or their learning?

Grading is not--or at least should not--be an economic transaction. The teacher is not the boss on the jobsite doling out dollars for the day's work to the laborers. If we're serious about grades actually reporting learning, we have to work to purge our vocabulary of this language about "earning."

Licensure, Testing Pressures, and Appropriate Teacher Pay

Oh. My. Word.

I just read this article from Education Week: You're More Likely to Pass the Bar Than an Elementary Teacher Licensing Exam.

There is a LOT in this article worth thinking about...but this jumped out at me: "Just 46 percent of teacher candidates pass the test on their first attempt—that's lower than the first-time pass rates for doctors, nuclear engineers, and lawyers on their licensing exams. In fact, the only lower initial pass rate is the multi-part exam for certified public accountants."

Whoa.

The People are the Work

It's a crazy week for me.

I was out of town last week, so I'm playing catch up on marking papers.

I've had a bunch of extra meetings for different committees and commitments.

It's registration season for the next semester, and advisees are coming out of the woodwork to ask me to weigh in.

Visiting student teachers, keeping up with my two students working on independent study projects, and--oh yeah--I have classes to teach(!) means it's a full, full week.

And then, a student stops by, and just asks if I have a few minutes to talk.

So, with a bit of an internal sigh, I put a smile on my face and turn away from my laptop, gesture toward the ramshackle little couch I have in my office, and turn in my chair to give her my full attention, even as I think to myself, "I have things to do..."

This junky little couch moved in to this office the same day I did.

Schools and Guns and Brokenness

I've started writing this post three or four times in the past few days, and I keep walking away from it. I feel like I have to say something in response to the school shooting in Parkland, FL last week, but I just can't seem to sort out my ideas. Here's my best thinking (summarized) for now...

Our society is so broken, that it seem like people on both sides of this debate are talking past each other, shouting their slogans, not really listening, and missing the nuance of the situation. But we have to actually have a conversation about this, and that's complicated, because people have such strong feelings, brute-force logic is not going to change hearts and minds.

A little more I can say to flesh this out...but recognize that these are my opinions, and I'm thinking out loud here, though pretty sure for now...

Planning for Day One

This one came across my Twitterfeed today (thanks to @justintarte for sharing!)...

Image by Jennifer Gonzalez @ Cult of Pedagogy. Used with permission.

Oh. Man.

What if every teacher took this approach?

On Liking and Learning

It's definitely summer-mode for me, and as I said to someone recently, this is the first time in five years that I'm neither taking courses, or teaching a course (or both) during the summer. Don't worry, I have plenty of other projects to work on, but I definitely appreciate the change of pace of being able to work a bit more on my own time-table.

For instance, yesterday morning, my colleagues in Education had an impromptu coffee time because one of our colleagues who had been out of the country for a few weeks was back, and we wanted to hear stories of her adventures abroad.

Through the course of our conversation, we wound up talking about different educational settings of which we have been part, as both students and instructors. We agreed that classroom atmosphere makes such a huge impact on students' learning, and even on their willingness to learn.

In response to this, I asked a question of my colleagues: "Do students have to like you to learn from you?"

They had a few initial responses to that wondering. We talked a bit about the difference of being liked and being respected. We talked a bit about the importance of caring relationships--that students have to know that their teachers care about them as people. But is caring the same thing as liking? (As in, can I care about my students even if I don't like them? Perhaps that's an entirely different conversation!)

We also talked about teachers that we liked very much but didn't learn much in their classes. So perhaps "learning" does not automatically result from "liking."

But I do wonder about this.

Can students learn effectively if they don't like their teachers? Is "liking" a prerequisite for "learning?" I'd love to hear what you think about this.

Public domain image from Pixabay.com

Cell Phones: Tools for Learning? Or Weapons of Mass Distraction?

The other day I received an email from a recent graduate of our Teacher Preparation Program. He was helping out in a school at home, since Commencement is long past for us, but classes are still going in K-12 schools. He saw this sign hanging up at a high school teacher's door:

With thanks to my (anonymous) (former) student for allowing me to post this...

Knowing that I am fascinated by educational technology, and the way we often use consumer technologies as educational technologies in schools, this prompted a question from him:

Hmmm...I use my phone to find a lot of information, more than my computer even. Maybe though in study hall high school kids "waste" too much time on it? Or should study hall be their choice of time once in high school? Your time, use it as you want without disrupting the class? 

Climate and Culture

One of my interests in the realm of education--as noted in the tagline above--is school culture. I think about culture in education quite a bit: the culture of my classroom, the various institutions I've served, and American education broadly. I am interested in how culture takes shape, and how individuals can contribute to the development of a culture.

And then, every once in a while, I see something that sort of knocks my socks off, and causes me to rethink what I have believed about the culture of education. I had a good example of one of those moments the other day, when I saw this tweet from my Twitterfriend, Justin Tarte (whom you should definitely be following, if you are a tweeting teacher!)

School climate is what is said in a staff faculty meeting.

School culture is what is said in the parking lot after the meeting.#edchat

— Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) May 8, 2017

This challenged me--in a positive way--because I think I had previously been conflating climate and culture, and seeing it painted this way helped me differentiate between the two in an obvious way.

Concerns About the Future of American Education: Betsy DeVos

Senate confirmation proceedings for Betsy DeVos--the nominee for Secretary of Education--are underway. DeVos is a polarizing figure, it seems. I have talked with a few people who think she is an amazing choice for Secretary of Education. But, from others, I have also heard grave concerns about her potential to lead the U.S. Department of Education. Honestly, the hearing has left me with little to be excited about. I see so much political theater in the questioning, and too little substance in her responses to questions, and some of them were downright troubling to me. One example (I'm paraphrasing): "Guns might be needed in schools in case of grizzly bear attacks." (No, I'm not kidding.)

Betsy DeVos
Image by Keith A. Almli [CC BY-SA 3.0]

The trouble is that it's pretty easy to push a video clip of an outrageous statement (like the one I've linked above) through social media, and that is likely to get people chattering. And, WOW is there a lot of chatter, in response to the bears comment, and quite a few others she made in the hearing.

I am not sure what to think about DeVos yet, actually. And so it's with great interest over the past day that I've been following some of my fellow tweeting-teachers whom I deeply respect. I have seen a lot of comments along the lines of, "She's never taught in public schools. She's never taught at all! And her kids went to private schools, and she went to private schools--how can she possibly understand public schools?" I want to tread lightly here; I think that these are real concerns, and these are questions that should be asked. 

But...I also want to push back, ever-so-gently on one point.

Being a Teacher

Tomorrow in my middle school curriculum and instruction class we're going to be talking about lesson plans. Which means...tonight I was working on my lesson plan for teaching future teachers about how to write lesson plans. (That feels like Inception, somehow.)

Teaching, as I often tell my students, is not for the faint of heart. Under the very best of circumstances, it is incredibly demanding. Just planning a lesson can be daunting, let alone teaching it. And don't get me started on assessing their learning. And then the demands of meeting the needs of individual students--can we really do this? Ensuring that all students will learn? And then there is the management of the classroom. How do we create a classroom atmosphere conducive to positive social interaction and meaningful engagement in learning? And how about fostering moral development in students? And communicating with parents? And keeping up with professional development expectations? And fulfilling other administrative tasks that are required?

As I was thinking about this, I created a quick web graphic to illustrate...

Being a teacher is like trying to do a yo-yo with your right hand while solving a Rubik's cube with your left hand while also balancing a broomstick on one foot, all at the same time. I might add that in the current school culture, it's like trying to do all of this while riding on the back of a 10-point buck in hunting season. 

So give those teachers in your life a little extra measure of grace. Yes, we chose to do this. And, for the most part, we love it--or we wouldn't keep doing it.

But being a teacher is anything but "easy."

Three Joyful Moments

This week is a busy one. Last week was too. (Lately, they all seem to be, honestly...) It's advising season as we prepare for registration for the spring semester, and this means extra meetings.

But amidst all the busyness, three joyful moments for me:

1. I had a hallway conversation with a fellow professor who was once one of my middle school students. (Yep...I'm getting old...that the kids I taught when they were young adolescents are now colleagues of mine? Yikes.) But the conversation was so fantastic: brief, but deeply reflective about the kind of learning environment we want our institution to be for faculty. I wonder sometimes how many colleges and universities think of themselves in that way: a place for professors to continue to learn, to develop, to hone their craft, to grow?

2. During a group advising session last night, one of my junior (3rd year) advisees and one of my freshman (1st year) advisees were talking across the table while waiting for me to come over and talk with them about their 4-year plans. Both are future middle school teachers. As I walked toward them, I overheard the junior said to the freshman something like, "I'm glad it's been a good experience for you so far in Education...but just wait! It gets better!" This made me feel so proud of our program, and the future we are privileged to have a hand in shaping. We start them off well...and they find it just gets better the further they go in their studies in Education.

3. My Elementary Science Methods course is a little odd this semester: I typically have about 20 students, but due to the foibles of scheduling, I only have 5 students taking the course this fall. This has been a wonderfully weird experience for me, and I find I run the course much more like a seminar than a lecture-based course. Today we went far off topic (we often get a little off topic...) because they were asking such great, deep questions about how to get students engaged in learning, and what we can do as teachers to help support them in this. The conversation was so rich that I totally lost track of time, and when I realized that we only had five minutes left, I exclaimed in dismay: I had only taught about a third of my intended lesson plan! But my students--these amazing scholars!--immediately suggested a solution: none of them have a class after our scheduled block on Friday, and they suggested that we plan to stay late on Friday afternoon, to not only participate in the hands-on activities planned for Friday's lab experience, but also to complete the lesson discussion from today.

I am blessed to be part of this place. I am honored to serve alongside these amazing faculty members and to work with students of this calibre.

I have my moments of stress, for sure. I have moments I am overwhelmed by the challenges of professing.

But these joyful moments were a great reminder for me of just how blessed I am to be here.

The Prairie at Dordt College, September 22, 2016. Image by Dave Mulder [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Opinions: Evidence of Thinking

"Hey, Professor Mulder...is this an opinion question?"

A few semesters ago, I had a student taking a test raise her hand to call me over with this concern. She was in the midst of of the test, doing her best to answer carefully, and the thought must have struck her that there were multiple "correct" answers to the question I was asking.

Not every question I ask on a test is cut-and-dried. Some are. Some questions are convergent: there is clearly one correct answer. Convergent questions are usually best for assessing relatively low-level knowledge and understanding. Can the students recall the facts? Have they mastered the vocabulary? Do they have an understanding of the basic concepts? Convergent questions are good for these sort of course material. By asking a convergent question on an exam, I am verifying that my students have mastered a particular concept. And this is valuable in it's way; there are concepts that I want all of my students to learn, and a convergent question is a way of focusing in on their knowledge of a particular concept.

However, I don't think that convergent questions are always the best questions, even on a test. I want my students to provide evidence of thinking, not just rote memorization. How will they use the basic concepts they have learned? I've written before about Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive objectives. Bloom's taxonomy is one way of thinking about different levels of thinking. Here it is in a nutshell:

I'm Going to Be the Most Mediocre Teacher I Can Be!

I had a less than stellar moment while teaching yesterday. (Oh, what a good reminder that I am still learning even though I am the teacher!)

It happened in Intro to Education. I was explaining an assignment. My students--freshmen, mostly--are about to undertake their first research project, and I was elaborating the expectations for how to conduct good research, as in, "googling for websites is search, not research." We were talking about the library collection, and Encyclopedias of Education, and reference librarians, and excellent academic resources available online. I closed my explanation with an encouragement to be excellent: "Think about it this way: are you in college to learn? Or to just 'get by?'"

I noticed several students turn to a friend seated next to them and mutter: "I'm trying to just get by..." with a grin.

I did not grin.

The Value of Struggle

We are ready for the maze!
(We ambitiously took this picture before getting started.)

My daughter and I recently visited the corn maze at a nearby farm. (Yes, I live in Iowa. This is a thing here...) I had gone with her older brother in past years; this was her first time trying out the maze.

A corn maze is very much what it sounds like: a farmer carves a path through a cornfield, creating a maze among the 8-foot tall cornstalks that are beginning to dry out as we head into fall. This particular place always cuts the maze into an interesting shape that must look very impressive when viewed from the air--this year, the image was a train on a track, engine puffing smoke, with trees and hills in the background.

From our vantage point, of course, it looked more like this:

Our view, traveling through the maze. (Remember too
that I am well over 6 feet tall, and this corn is far taller!)

Before entering the maze, we received a map to help us discern our way, which showed the entrance and exit, and every line on the map indicated the dirt path through the tall corn.

And the fun: hidden throughout the twisting path were six waypoints. At each waypoint, a different shaped hole-punch to record our visit. If we could make our way through the maze and find each of the six punches, we would win a prize! Of course we were up for this challenge!

And so, we plunged in.

What Kind of Work?

So.

It's time to have a difficult conversation, teacher friends.

Here goes...

We have to think about what students are doing in your class, and why they are doing it.

Educational Goals: Learning or Accountability?

In my Timehop today was a retweet of something shared this time last year by my Twitterfriend David Hochheiser (who is a wise, funny, generous educator--I've you're a teacher on Twitter, you should be following him.)

Here was the (re)tweet that caught my eye today:

I think he's right.

An Analogy to Help Teachers Understand Homework

I have been thinking and thinking about homework over the past few months--why teachers give it (many reasons), whether it truly advances learning (debatable), what the scholarly research says about it (it's complicated), and what parents can do to partner with schools on this issue (reply hazy, try again). (If you are interested in reading my past posts on this topic, feel free to read through this list of posts tagged "homework.")

I was recently struck with what I think might be a helpful analogy for teachers who are themselves perhaps wrestling with what to do about assigning homework. Here it is...

Imagine, teacher, that your administrator hands down an expectation that you are going to write detailed lesson plans for every single thing you teach. You are expected to do this every single day, and must submit them by 7:30 a.m. every day. If you are late, or if your work is incomplete, you will have to give up your lunch hour as a consequence. Every once in awhile, you get a stack of your lesson plans back from your administrator with "10/10" or "B+" or "78%" written on the top of them, but with no other comments, written or verbally submitted.

How would you feel about this situation?

Homework: Comparing to Finland

Today I had two different friends share this same video on Facebook. It is a video comparing homework assigned in Finland and homework in the U.S. I hope you'll take a minute (literally) to watch it...

If you've been following my blogging over the past year, you'll know that I have a lot of concerns about the way teachers (often) assign homework in the U.S. The short version: I think that an awful lot of the work that is assigned is "crappy homework" that doesn't actually do what teachers think it does. We can do better, and I've been reading and thinking about this as I have time. Here are a few ideas for how we could improve homework.

I really appreciate that people are becoming more broadly aware of what Finland is doing in terms of education, and I truly appreciate the calls for looking to Finland for suggestions of education reforms in the U.S. as well. Finland does many things almost opposite of what we are doing in terms of education here in the U.S.--reducing homework, increasing recess time,  revising curriculum to include more topics that connect to students interests, increasing teacher pay and requiring all teachers to earn a Masters degree.

However...