Asynchronous content

Balancing synchronous and asynchronous content in your course

When teaching in person, coursework can often be categorized as either a part of the class time or as homework. Whether you are transitioning to teaching remotely, or designing a fully online course from the beginning, a good starting point is to rethink how these distinctions change in an online format.

In-person

In a fully in-person course, coursework may have looked like this for students:

A timeline showing an example breakdown of activities within a traditional synchronous lecture.

However, as we mentioned in the introduction, this format no longer works well when completely online.

In an online teaching format, you’ll need to decide how to separate your course into synchronous work (work done live over Zoom or in-person if hybrid) and asynchronous work (work done independently by students outside of class time).

Remote

What needs to happen synchronously?

A timeline highlighting the specific components within a traditional lecture, such as discussion and reaction, that are best preserved as synchronous activities.

You may find that you want to choose only a few activities to happen synchronously, and allow students to complete other tasks asynchronously. If so, let students know ahead of time the sequence they should complete asynchronous activities.

A timeline showing the traditional class restructured, with a combination of asynchronous activities before and after class, and synchronous activities during meetups.

Of course, this is just one way to structure your course. Below are some examples of ways you can transition synchronous activities to asynchronous ones.

A table listing synchronous activities and equivalent asynchronous activities.

Asynchronous discussion

Discussions in Brightspace

Online discussion forums allow students to have extended asynchronous discussions across your course. To get started creating yours, check out the slides and recording from a recent workshop we did on enhancing online discussions.

Here are a few best practices for designing discussion posts we recommend for Brightspace’s Discussions tool:

Students should respond to a specific prompt that asks them to apply knowledge. General prompts asking students if they “have any questions” or to simply “reflect on a topic” usually do not result in substantive responses.
Let students know how you will interact with the discussion.
- Respond to discussion posts during live class sessions
- Respond to the discussion yourself at regular intervals
- Students are required to provide peer feedback before you or your TA will respond to any common questions.
Tie in student responses to live class whenever possible. This lets students know that discussions are a valued part of the class and not simply writing responses into the void where no one ever sees them.

Creating video content for your course

Adding video to your course creates opportunities for students to review course material on their own schedule and can help to prioritize synchronous “in-class” time for more discussion-based activities.

We have held multiple workshops that walk users through the process of creating video of course content. Check out the slides and recording for these events.

A few best practices we highlight in our workshops are:

- Shorter is better. If you find yourself trying to cover too many concepts in one video, or going longer than 10 minutes, you may want to split the video into two or more parts.
- Consider reusability. If you are creating a “mini-lecture” that you want to use across classes, avoid referencing specific deadlines, assignments, or events related to a particular class.
- Try creating partially solved and fully solved worked-example problems

The mini-lecture is not the only video format! You can also demonstrate how an expert solves problems or partially solve a problem that students need to finish on their own.

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