Quiet Synchronicity For Remote Teaching
As I’m one of those engaging in a first-time-ever experiment in all-remote teaching and learning, I’ve begun to wonder about how I think about “synchronous” classes, especially since “synchronous” seems to have become, for the most part, synonymous with Zoom or other video-based modes of communication. Zoom is an excellent and necessary tool, of course. At the same time, it’s “high bandwidth” on both literal and metaphorical levels: it uses the most literal bandwidth in terms of bits per second, but also the most intellectual and emotional bandwidth. It can feel exhausting.
So, I’ve begun to explore what I’m calling “quietly synchronous teaching.” What if “synchronous” need not, necessarily, mean “live video?”
Some things I’ve been experimenting with (with varied, but also promising, results):
- Real-Time Text Chat: We meet in a chatroom rather than on Zoom for all or part of a class. I’ve noticed that, since that kind of forum is something students are used to as a very informal kind of venue, they’ll actually interact with one another more than they will on Zoom sometimes. Sometimes I’ll just pose questions, others I’ll have students simply read a text together, posting their responses as they go. In a tool like Hangouts, you can even save a transcript of the entire session for later reference. (Note: the Moodle chatroom function is handy, but doesn’t allow one to save a transcript as far as I can tell.)
- Real-Time Forums: We use the regular Moodle Forum function, but we’re all working/writing simultaneously. Seems to work well for a more formal, organized discussion. Students can also divide different topics into their own threads. I’ve used things like “think/pair/share” kinds of structures with this.
- Hypothes.is: This is an under-utilized gem. It’s an online tool, which can be integrated with Moodle, which allows groups to collectively annotate any digital text. Each student can add highlights and comments to the text, but the neat thing is that each comment has a “reply” function wherein students can actually engage in some back-and-forth conversation about their annotations (and of course the instructor can too). I think there’s a lot of possibility here.
- Watch parties: These are higher bandwidth, but I’ve found it can be useful to use zoom to stream a video to the class, and everyone can discuss it in real-time in text chat (even zoom’s chat function works with this).
- Synchronous Writing: I borrowed this from a writing group I belong to, where we’ll help each other get work done by simply meeting in a real-time text chat room, and then use the “pomodoro” technique (focused 20-minute bursts of concentrated work), all doing our individual work together. Something about being present with others doing this really works, and we can encourage each other, share drafting back and forth, etc. between writing sessions. This is pretty neat when I want students to work on drafting essays, for example.
What tools, techniques, or exercises as anyone else found as potentially-effective “low bandwidth” alternatives?
Comments powered by Talkyard.