Synchronous session

Online teaching is a great way to increase student access to education.  It allows students to have resources at their disposal almost anywhere at anytime.  However, there are certain limitations to online teaching and asynchronous learning.  Students need real help in real time.

Synchronous sessions allow students to have direct access to the teacher.  If the teacher uses synchronous methods with "face time", students and teachers can put a face with a name.  This humanizes the classroom.  It let's the students see the teacher as a person and the teacher see the students as people.

One on one synchronous sessions are the best for giving students feedback on progress and help on individual questions.  However, doing one on one sessions with numerous students is often impractical.

There are however many benefits to synchronous sessions as a class.  Students in a classroom session are more likely to talk to each other.  After reading the TOOL discussion of synchronous sessions, I am going to encourage students create and utilize breakout sessions.  I may even assign groups and give a follow up assignment to the discussion.  The students will then complete these assignments in a break out session.

Here is a bit more about synchronous sessions.

I am currently teaching an online course.  My class is small, and most of the students I have are at my school.  This allows me to see them in the day if I need to do so.  I have a few other students at other schools in my district.  I travel to see them face to face once a week.  Because of this, I haven not had to explore synchronous sessions as much as I would otherwise.  I have utilized Google Hangouts and Face Time with them, but I need to do more with synchronous sessions.  This will be even more important if I teach students that are more removed from me.