Using Asynchronous Teaching Templates

Online Teaching Using Asynchronous Strategies

Online teaching can feel like a shift from an instructor's traditional teaching approach, but it can also be an opportunity to develop new ways to guide and facilitate student learning. The greatest advantage of learning online for students, and for instructors, is the flexibility of time and space, as it allows for more asynchronous learning activities. 

Diversity, Inclusivity, Accessibility, and Equity

Given the additional challenges for students during a global pandemic, taking advantage of asynchronous learning online can go a long way to reducing barriers to their learning. Asynchronous learning activities provide different opportunities for inclusive, accessible, and equitable learning experiences with alternate ways for students to participate, engage, and demonstrate their learning and thinking. This can make help learning become more visible for a wider range of students.

 

Asynchronous Teaching Templates

Learning activities for online courses, are typically designed using the backward design approach with the course objectives and goals in mind. The same is true when you are shifting some learning activities from teaching in person, to teaching online. While these templates are not a substitute for carefully designed online course development, they will help to quickly create some asynchronous learning activities 

When using asynchronous learning activities to move learning online, its important that they are not additional assignments, but designed to replace in class activities and should take no more time than the amount of time that would have been devoted in class. Keep in mind that online discussions do take more time than face-to-face discussions, as students tend to put more effort and thought to compose responses, and take time to read the responses of other students. 

Many of the Asynchronous Teaching templates in this module are created as Canvas Assignments. Similar to other Canvas content areas, such as pages, announcements, discussions, you can easily copy these assignments Links to an external site. into your course. Once they are copied over, you can edit and adapt the learning activity for your course.

 

Tips

  • Provide students with clear instructions on what you would like them to do and when you would like them to have it done by. 
  • Add a 'to do by' or 'due' dates to asynchronous activities to provide students with a clear timeline and so the task is included in the course calendar.
  • If using new educational technology or tools, provide resources on how to use these. 
  • Give a clear description on how the activity relates to their learning in the class. If you are having one week of asynchronous and then another one synchronous, bring the work from one into the other to give students a sense of continuity.
  • Take time to explore the ETS Online Course Showcase as there may be relevant information in other areas.  For example, the Asynchronous Discussions, is one,  and there are a number of examples in other modules that would work well for asynchronous content presentation. 

 

Need Help?

Please reach out to one of the Learning Designers (via email at ets.educ@ubc.ca) for help with using the template or creating your own asynchronous learning activities. 

If you have an asynchronous learning activity that you've created and would like to share with your colleagues, please let us know. We can create a template and add it to this collection. 

 

References

Costa, Karen. (January 6, 2022). Online Education Isn’t Just a Modality — It’s a Movement. Karen Costa. [website] Retrieved from: https://karenraycosta.medium.com/online-education-isnt-just-a-modality-it-s-a-movement-68b9f132b7b6 Links to an external site. 

Javeri, Sabyn (September 6, 2021). How Remote Learning Subverts Power and Privilege in Higher Education. EdSurge [website] Retrieved from: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-09-06-how-remote-learning-subverts-power-and-privilege-in-higher-education Links to an external site. 

Krieger, J. Meryl,  Lee, Linda J., & Zolkover, Adam D. (nd).  Structuring Asynchronous Discussions — Change the Prompt, Not the Tool: Developing Effective Discussions. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from: https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/document/C4D1FAQHdTyJIBNpsEw/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/0/1641559822959?e=1642201200&v=beta&t=1mgUpWZq6qeKHBh3SOMOV3CPCdzaN9rYpeJJm0DEG_E Links to an external site.