Instructional Design

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Learning

It seems like educational buzzwords have become part of our everyday conversations. Synchronous learning occurs when students and teachers come together, either in-person or online, to share learning. Asynchronous learning occurs when everybody learns independently from one another either on the same schedule or at different times.

While asynchronous learning provides a bit more freedom and flexibility, it can also be a challenge to students when they don’t have adult support, or they don’t know how to use available resources to assist them. It also presents a challenge to teachers who are dedicated to their students and find themselves working twice as hard to meet their learning needs.

What is a flipped classroom?

In a typical situation, a flipped classroom model is one in which students alternate between in-person and virtual instruction. The difference between this traditional model and the hybrid model that we are implementing is that our students at home will be learning at the same time as our students at school, but the material will not be the same in most cases. Note that in the sample schedule below, Friday, Oct. 9th, is a unique day where your students will not be completing the same lesson activities. This is due to the fact that we don’t begin in-person instruction until Monday morning, and students in Cohort 1 will need to be prepared.

This means that one class is always one step ahead of another, similar to how A-Day and B-Day classes operate. It also means you will teach the same in-person lesson and provide the same at-home lessons twice a week since you will be teaching them to each cohort. In the space between your Tuesday and Thursday classes, you will continue to provide tutoring, hold office hours, and plan instruction.

Sometimes it’s tricky to make this work, especially if there is a holiday or workday that results in one cohort having more lessons than the other. In that case, you may have to add an enrichment activity the next day to keep your lessons in sync or give kids who missed the day an abbreviated lesson to help them keep on top of what’s going on in your class.

Instructional Design Models

There should be a deliberate structure to each lesson. While different instructional design models seem to pop up everywhere, we wanted to provide the least complicated way to help teachers imagine how a flipped lesson can be designed. This particular model suggests a lesson design that incorporates a series of actions; lessons may include some or all of the actions, depending on what you want your students to learn, and examples repeat on purpose since certain activities are effective in either setting.

The chart above is not an exhaustive list of all the possibilities, of course, but it’s a starting point for teachers learning to fly the airplane as you build it.

Accountability at Home

In your infinite patience, you might find yourself using your synchronous days to reteach content that students failed to complete via the requirements you set forth during their asynchronous days. We will offer Schoology training in order to help you set the students up for success since they will be expected to complete assignments with limited teacher support. We recommend that you take a different approach this year so that your students who are prepared are able to move along in class, and require those who are not prepared to use their in-person learning time to catch up on what they did not do at home. This may be a hard habit to break since many of you are willing to work until sometime around midnight every evening to help your students get it together. However, save room in your schedule for students who genuinely have accommodations. It may especially be hard to handle for these students, but you have to be good to yourself, too.

With all of that said, we would like you to complete this chart as a basic lesson planning activity. You will need to fill it in if you plan to participate in our synchronous training on Wednesday, 9/30. This template is intended to help you design a smooth lesson, but keep it simple. We don’t want it to be overkill, so please don’t try to come up with fifteen different resources that take up your valuable time and ultimately cannot be completed in a lesson or two.

Can I Just Breathe?

It’s no secret that many of us spent summer vacation planning and preparing for remote learning. However, we have seen our work pay off in that each day gets better in terms of routines, progress, and fewer overall technology issues. Suddenly switching gears to learn a new instructional model just as we settle into September may seem like a huge adjustment, especially for teachers who are just getting their feet under them in terms of the distance learning model. Very few of us are comfortable with the “make it up as you go” model of instruction we are currently living, but the reality is, we’re all in this together right now.

Since you have already achieved some level of comfort with remote teaching (think back to that first week and how you’ve grown), the move to a hybrid model may feel like a leap of faith, but it’s one you’ve prepared yourself to take.

Sincerely,

Marianne and Jamie

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