2 sections of the same course, one synchronous, one asynchronous. Tips?

[downer]

Next semester I will be teaching 2 online sections of a course I have taught many times before, both in the classroom and online. All my online teaching has been asychonous.

Next semester one of those sections has been designated as synchronous. This will be new for me.

I plan to teach the asychronous much as I have taught it in the past.

I have a couple of concerns.

One is how to make the courses even roughly equivalent in work load. The general model for synchronous courses is that students do maybe 3 or 4 written assignments and a couple of exams, while the model for asynchronous is that they are participating in discussion each week and also doing about 5 tests, and also a paper. My general impression is that students in asynchronous classes end up doing a lot more work. They spend a lot less time being passive, listening to someone lecture.

My inclination is to make the synchronous students do presentations every class, and minimize how much I lecture. These will be pretty good students, eager to get a strong grade, and with quite a lot of skills, so that seems a realistic plan.

Another concern is how to minimize the extra work that I have to do in teaching the asynchronous class. One of the big benefits of teaching two sections of the same course is that it should be less work and I want to get that benefit.

Anyone had any experience with doing something like this?

[polly_mer]

Another concern is how to minimize the extra work that I have to do in teaching the asynchronous class. One of the big benefits of teaching two sections of the same course is that it should be less work and I want to get that benefit.

You're going to have to let that expectation go, even though that is usually the biggest benefit of having two sections of the same course in a given term.

[downer]

Another concern is how to minimize the extra work that I have to do in teaching the asynchronous class. One of the big benefits of teaching two sections of the same course is that it should be less work and I want to get that benefit.

You're going to have to let that expectation go, even though that is usually the biggest benefit of having two sections of the same course in a given term.

We will see. My prediction is that while it will be more work than doing 2 asynchronous sections of the same course, it will be quite a lot less work than doing 2 different classes. Why? Because that is how I will organize things. That's why I'm planning ahead now. My goal is to have just about everything in place by the start of the term.

[polly_mer]

Another concern is how to minimize the extra work that I have to do in teaching the asynchronous class. One of the big benefits of teaching two sections of the same course is that it should be less work and I want to get that benefit.

You're going to have to let that expectation go, even though that is usually the biggest benefit of having two sections of the same course in a given term.

We will see. My prediction is that while it will be more work than doing 2 asynchronous sections of the same course, it will be quite a lot less work than doing 2 different classes. Why? Because that is how I will organize things. That's why I'm planning ahead now. My goal is to have just about everything in place by the start of the term.

Perhaps I misunderstood the question.  I thought you were asking for help on how to minimize the work while teaching the same material in two different modalities.

Everything I've read recently indicated that truly planning to have good courses in two different modalities during the same semester was almost as much work as having two entirely different courses because the course content is not the hard part.

On the other hand, I read what you have listed as work requirements for the students and wonder if you've left something out because those are both far less work than I expect to see in a college course unless each paper is 10+ pages that requires substantial library research to find the 10-20 useful sources and you neglected to mention the 50-100 pages of reading every week in modern English or the 10 pages of translation.

[OneMoreYear]

Can you do a partial flip for your synchronous class, so that they are watching the same asynchronous mini-lectures prior to class time (not sure how long your asynchronous recorded lectures are), and the class time for synchronous is primarily for discussion/examples/assessment similar to the discussions and tests being taken by your asynchronous students?

[Caracal]

Everything I've read recently indicated that truly planning to have good courses in two different modalities during the same semester was almost as much work as having two entirely different courses because the course content is not the hard part.

I would suggest the goal is good enough. I don't know about others but I haven't been suddenly blessed with massive amounts of time and energy to overhaul courses this year. The return on doing so is likely to be pretty small, especially if you aren't likely to teach a course in a new format again after this spring. Whenever I teach a new course or do a full redesign of a old one, the first semester is a lot of trail and error. It's a lot of work but I never really know what will work and what won't until I try it. The payoff for the students and me comes in subsequent semesters. If this is just a one off, you're probably going to end up with a better class if you just adapt what you have around the edges rather than trying to create something brand new.

[kiana]

Can you do a partial flip for your synchronous class, so that they are watching the same asynchronous mini-lectures prior to class time (not sure how long your asynchronous recorded lectures are), and the class time for synchronous is primarily for discussion/examples/assessment similar to the discussions and tests being taken by your asynchronous students?

This is what I'm doing. I designed a course to be async and got another sync section at the last minute to replace something that didn't make and I just did. not. have. time.

[downer]

In terms of aims and constraints, I'm happy if my course is great. But that is not the top priority. The top priority is for it to be good enough. Next priority: it can't take up too much of my time. Third, I need to find it interesting to teach. Fourth, maximize the learning of the students, if this fits in within the other constraints.

[fishbrains]

Everything I've read recently indicated that truly planning to have good courses in two different modalities during the same semester was almost as much work as having two entirely different courses because the course content is not the hard part.

I would suggest the goal is good enough. I don't know about others but I haven't been suddenly blessed with massive amounts of time and energy to overhaul courses this year. The return on doing so is likely to be pretty small, especially if you aren't likely to teach a course in a new format again after this spring. Whenever I teach a new course or do a full redesign of a old one, the first semester is a lot of trail and error. It's a lot of work but I never really know what will work and what won't until I try it. The payoff for the students and me comes in subsequent semesters. If this is just a one off, you're probably going to end up with a better class if you just adapt what you have around the edges rather than trying to create something brand new.

Blending modalities always seems very confusing and too much to remember (Did I tell this class this? Did I remember to do that in the other class? Etc.), but I'm getting old. I tend to prefer keeping the two modalities completely separate and treating them as two very different classes. I make it easier on myself by using the same content, but, to me, the fun is in trying to deliver the same content in different ways and seeing what works. Interestingly, I'm finding that my asynchronous online students meet the desired course outcomes better than my face-to-face or synchronous students. Go figure.

Ain't nothing easy. Overall, I've been very frustrated by admins who think we just "throw our stuff online" and then the teaching magic ensues.

[AvidReader]

The general model for synchronous courses is that students do maybe 3 or 4 written assignments and a couple of exams, while the model for asynchronous is that they are participating in discussion each week and also doing about 5 tests, and also a paper. My general impression is that students in asynchronous classes end up doing a lot more work. They spend a lot less time being passive, listening to someone lecture.

I've taught synchronous online courses and really enjoyed them (but never taught the same course in these two modalities concurrently). I think many of your instincts (not too much lecturing, having the students present often) will serve you well.

If I were in your position, I would use as much of the same materials as possible. OneMoreYear's partial flip sounds smart: they can still watch your lectures, but on their own time, and you can use part of your synchronous meetings to answer questions about the lectures.

If asynchronous students would do a graded discussion each week, keep that discussion in your synchronous section, but make it live. Grade them for their contributions. If they carry the main burden of discussion, you might be able to grade it live, leaving you with no grading afterwards. (You may need to train them how to discuss for the first few weeks, but once they have the hang of it, if they are as motivated as you suggest, they should be able to manage with occasional steering from you.) Could you make one of the tests a short oral exam? Those, too, can be much faster to grade. If the work they would do on a test is equivalent to the work they would do for a paper, pick whichever will be easier for you to grade.

Also: unless you grade in huge long marathons, stagger deadlines for major work. Even teaching multiple sections of the same course, I try whenever possible to have one class with work mostly due on Mondays, and another class with the same work due a few days (or even a week) later. If you have a paper due in the synchronous class (though I don't necessarily think that synchronous=papers and asynchronous=exams), schedule the equivalent assessment a few days later in the asynchronous section so you don't have all the grading on the same day.

I'll also note that I find 12 students to be at the upper limit of a successful online synchronous discussion. Missing some of the social cues of in-person classes means that there are more false starts. I never require video, but I encourage it, and I encourage students to physically raise their hands and/or to use the chat box to respond so that they can engage with the current topics more immediately. It's been my experiences that individual students often speak for longer stretches of time in online classes, so it can be hard to make the conversations flow quite as dynamically.

AR.

[spork]

My recommendation is to refuse to teach one of the two online sections if at all possible. It's really stupid for the university to offer one as synchronous and the other as asynchronous. Make them both the same or don't offer them at all.

[downer]

My recommendation is to refuse to teach one of the two online sections if at all possible. It's really stupid for the university to offer one as synchronous and the other as asynchronous. Make them both the same or don't offer them at all.

What is stupid about it?

[marshwiggle]

My recommendation is to refuse to teach one of the two online sections if at all possible. It's really stupid for the university to offer one as synchronous and the other as asynchronous. Make them both the same or don't offer them at all.

What is stupid about it?

If they're already online, dictating whether they need to be synchronous or asynchronous is serious micromanaging. It's like dictating that one section is going to have 5 assignments, and the other is going to have 3 papers. Unless administrators claim to have some incredible pedagogical insights, those details ought to be left to the instructor. (And even if they did claim those insights, so that one format was pedagogically superior, then make them both work that way.)

[OneMoreYear]

Can you do a partial flip for your synchronous class, so that they are watching the same asynchronous mini-lectures prior to class time (not sure how long your asynchronous recorded lectures are), and the class time for synchronous is primarily for discussion/examples/assessment similar to the discussions and tests being taken by your asynchronous students?

This is what I'm doing. I designed a course to be async and got another sync section at the last minute to replace something that didn't make and I just did. not. have. time.

Kiana, I'm curious how this is working for you. I'm planning a partial flip on a sync course because I think it will actually be better for the students to watch the lectures/demo before class and use the class for practice.

[Caracal]

My recommendation is to refuse to teach one of the two online sections if at all possible. It's really stupid for the university to offer one as synchronous and the other as asynchronous. Make them both the same or don't offer them at all.

What is stupid about it?

If they're already online, dictating whether they need to be synchronous or asynchronous is serious micromanaging. It's like dictating that one section is going to have 5 assignments, and the other is going to have 3 papers. Unless administrators claim to have some incredible pedagogical insights, those details ought to be left to the instructor. (And even if they did claim those insights, so that one format was pedagogically superior, then make them both work that way.)

Doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to me if most classes have been moved online. Some students might prefer a format that is closer to traditional classes and others might not have the time or resources to manage that. If a school wants to make sure to offer a selection of both kinds of courses that is fine.

I agree that it is annoying to make individual instructors teach the same class in both formats. If the instructor is teaching the only two sections of some required course maybe there's not another good option. I seem to always end up teaching two sections of the same course, one MWF for 50 minutes and the other MW for 75.