Q: Should we teach synchronously, asynchronously, or both?
A: Both!

This recommendation comes to you from First Year Writing and the English Department, and it’s based on what we’ve learned since we left campus in March. As we’ve caught up with contemporary research on digital pedagogies for writing and the humanities, we’ve also surveyed undergrads in our department about their experience of taking English classes remotely in the spring. The lessons we learned may look a little contradictory at first, but we think they make sense when you put them all together in one long sentence.

In sum, we learned that:

• Asynchronous instruction is generally preferred to synchronous instruction at the college level; but

• Some synchronous teaching is often recommended, too, especially in humanities courses; at commuter campuses; and for instructors who are new to teaching online; because

• The success of online courses depends upon the instructor’s ability to create a strong sense of “presence” and “community” in the digital space; and

• It’s hard to create that kind and degree of coherence without some synchronous component, especially for faculty who are new to teaching online.

On a more specific note, our students also told us that they found their spring classes most successful when they met with their instructors and each other synchronously in some fashion at every scheduled class meeting. That regularity helped them maintain their connection to the campus and their class routines amid the chaos.

Q: We definitely want to help them with that. So how should we think about the combination of synchronous and asynchronous instruction?

A: We’re thinking of our asynchronous platforms as the place where we do the bulk of our teaching– where we dig deeply into texts to work out the knotty problems of interpretation and composition. Our synchronous meetings give us time to structure the class as a community with interests in common. When we meet on Zoom, we can check in with our students and hear from those who write less volubly online for example; introduce assignments and explain the logic that holds them together; organize reading/writing groups; and pull together threads of conversation that emerge along the way.

Q. This seems a little different from the recommendations we received last spring from the department and this summer in the CTL workshop. Has something changed?

A: We’ve learned some things since the spring, and we didn’t design the CTL workshop. We hesitate to complicate the picture that was presented there, and we hesitate, too, to make a recommendation that might conflict with early plans you’ve made for the fall. We know that everyone is juggling lots of responsibilities at the moment in a landscape that is shifting constantly. That’s where we live, too, and we’re making these recommendations now with the best interests of our students in mind– also with gratitude to you for working with us in that spirit, too.

Q. Let’s just dwell on the pedagogical side of this a little bit more then. Why not teach entirely synchronously, using Zoom to create “class time” as we usually have it?

A: There is a broad consensus among scholars of digital pedagogy that this is a bad idea, because it’s hard for students and faculty to engage closely with texts in synchronous meetings online. Discussion becomes somewhat stilted because the technology leaves some lag times between speech and the transmission of speech, and everyone is distracted by the phenomena of the screen. That makes teaching on Zoom more exhausting than teaching face-to-face (you probably know this from experience, and it is borne out by data, too).

It also means that you and your students will find it harder to focus for the long class periods we have for writing classes. Some kinds of activities that are integral to writing pedagogy—like group work, writing workshops, and low-stakes writing—also require some translation to work for a class that can’t assemble face-to-face.

Q. And, on the other hand, why not teach entirely asynchronously?

A: Current research on digital pedagogy advises us strongly against that, too. Generally speaking, undergraduate students become much less likely to stay in school when their connection to the campus grows tenuous, so they have only an opaque sense of their classmates and instructors as people. Experienced and exceptionally mature college students can build those kinds of relationships in courses they take online, but students who have little familiarity with the culture of the university find it harder.

That fits with what we learned from the survey we gave our students last semester, and it fits also with what we know that our students at QC more generally. They tend to find their connections to the campus hard to make and maintain even under the best of times, because they lead busy lives in this city that makes great demands on their time. That makes them prone to disappearing from our classes, despite their best intentions and strong commitments to their studies.

We saw that effect exacerbated in the spring semester. As the force of the pandemic combined with the relatively diffuse structure of our classes after the quick transition to online teaching, the college saw an exceptionally high number of students losing the thread and failing to complete the semester in some fashion.

We want to keep our students with us by maintaining our usual schedule of classes, so we can also maintain a strong sense of community in our classes.

Q. All right, let’s get specific. How should I combine my synchronous and asynchronous work– what will that actually look like?

A. There is no single right answer to this question, and possible good answers are limitless. Here are a few.

Example #1, from Alexis Larsson

Asynchronous: Each week, students have 1-2 lo-fi videos from me, with a lot of screen presentations with documents on writing topics relevant to the assignments for the week or to the upcoming workshop (see below). Students respond to the required readings and lessons in a variety of ways, including worksheets that help to scaffold the analysis and writing process, analysis forms that are then reviewed and mined for presentation in group work; and discussion posts (not my favorite TBH). Students are also expected to integrate them into workshop drafts. I use a freewriting app to log freewriting and informal reflective writing work that does not need to be read, and ask them to build from there to more formal summaries, reflections, and zero drafts. Asynchronous work is assigned as far in advance as possible, with a large window of availability so that students can make time to complete it. There is no expectation that students not scheduled for synchronous meetings with me should be available at the class time, but I do recommend they use that scheduled time to complete the lessons and activities.

Synchronous: The whole class meets for a fraction of the total class time at the start of the week. This is a time for asking questions as a class and for doing any group work that is not worshopping a draft. Students have had at least a week with any material, including lessons and readings, before meeting, unless they read the response from a peer in their group, which is sent a day or two ahead if not distributed within the class meeting. Aside from full class time, the class is divided into workshop groups. Each group meets weekly. This is the meat of the class. We meet with a shared Google Doc, the assignment for the draft due at the workshop (the deadline for this draft is their workshop, either Monday or Wednesday, but the deadline for the revision is the same for everyone). The structure is almost always the same: we read the assignment together, and students have a few minutes to outline three things that are the most essential expectations– “criteria”–for the assignment. This brief conversation brings the purpose of the assignment forward and encourages students to consider how the guidelines serve the purpose or main idea of the assignment. We then read each student’s draft. Note: I usually do not want students to read their own draft, to highlight the reader’s experience, but it is important that readers do not “correct” or alter the writing as they read it. Once we’ve read the draft, we discuss it in terms of the three criteria. Students have a chance to revise their writing by Friday–in other words, they are not graded for the writing until Friday–and the assessment is mostly in terms of the three criteria. Criteria is often assumed in future sessions, such as when an essay is revised, if it represents a higher-order concern already covered in a previous week, or if it should be assumed (such as, after the first assignment, having a title that is not named after the assignment prompt).

Example #2, from Christopher Williams

After teaching English 210W in the Summer Sessions, I’ve come to deeply appreciate how breaking class time (or the week) into synchronous and asynchronous components not only helps keep students engaged in their community of peer scholars but also fosters the type of time management skills and accountability that our students often need to succeed at college. In my summer course, which was scheduled to meet four times a week for 2 hours and 40 minutes each session, I met synchronously with students on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, students completed asynchronous lessons with work that was due by midnight. For the Fall, however, in my English 110 class, I plan to meet with students synchronously for some portion of every class since we are learning that such consistent, face-to-face interaction significantly impacts the measure of commitment and engagement of first-year students in writing courses like English 110.

In Fall 2020, my English 110 class will generally meet synchronously on Tuesdays from 1:40 p.m. to 2:55 p.m. (i.e. for 1 hour and 15 minutes) then students will be assigned individual, asynchronous work that they must submit by the end of the day. I will be available on Slack from 2:55 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. (i.e. the rest of “official” class time) to address student questions about the lesson or asynchronous work they have to complete. On Thursdays, after a 15-minute full-class introduction to the lesson, students will meet synchronously in small groups (i.e. conference hour group workshops) for about 30 to 45 minutes. After this, students will turn asynchronously to individual tasks that must be submitted by the end of the day. Just like on Tuesday, I will be available on Slack the rest of class time to address student questions. This set-up ensures that students engage and interact with me and each other in each session in low-stakes work that prepares them for individual, higher-stakes work they can complete and submit at their own pace (i.e. asynchronously). It also allows students much more opportunity to ask me individualized one-on-one questions that they would even in a face-to-face lesson.

Tuesdays

• 1:40 – 1:55 Entire class synchronously reviews and discusses lesson slideshow (15 mins)
• 1:55 – 2:10 Student groups work synchronously on assigned text or assignment (15 mins)
• 2:10 – 2:25 Class shares and discusses responses synchronously (15 mins)
• 2:25 – 2:40 Students individually begin assignment off-line which is due by 11:59 (15 mins)
• 2:40 – 2:50 Instructor checks student progress and overviews draft work (15 mins)
• 2:50 – 3:30* Students can continue to work on task due by 11:59 p.m. (35 mins)

Thursdays

• 1:40 – 1:55 Entire class synchronously reviews and discusses lesson slideshow (15 mins)
• 1:55 – 2:25 Conference hour groups workshop synchronously (30 mins)
• 2:25 – 2:40 Groups share work and instructor overviews draft work (15 mins)
• 2:40 – 3:20* Students asynchronously begin individual assignment due by 11:59 (40 mins)
• 3:20 – 3:30 Instructor checks student progress and overviews homework (10 mins)

* Instructor is available on Slack/email for student questions

Example #3, from Rachael Benavidez

I record 5- to 10-minute videos for the lecture I would do in an in-person class. I don’t really separate tasks into classwork versus homework, since it’s all homework when we teach online. Instead, I think about the work that will help students meet the learning objectives. The assignments they complete are a combination of work they would do in class and what I would post as homework on the course website if we were meeting in person.

I have provided a breakdown of a possible structure for a synchronous class. However, it’s just one scenario. As with teaching in person, the way in which we teach synchronously depends on various factors, such as complexity of upcoming assignments, addressing common issues we notice in student online work, and situations that we think may require more interactive discussion than can be accomplished online.

There will be times when we will need to meet synchronously for a longer amount of time because we’re introducing a new essay progression. However, there are other times when students may just want to have a few questions answered and then drop off to do the work.

I think what’s important is for both students and instructors to know that they have consistent times to meet with students—for everyone’s sanity.

One of my classes is scheduled to meet Monday and Wednesday 10:05 – 11:55 a.m. in CUNYfirst, so I’ve used that as my example.