With the growth in educational technology, online teaching platforms are growing rapidly. With better flexibility, convenience, comfort, and cost-effectiveness provided, educators look for a platform to sell courses online and grow in their professional field. Online teaching is divided into two main modes that are synchronous and asynchronous. Asynchronous learning is an online education model where learners complete the course topics and syllabus at their preferred place.
This doesn’t include live virtual meetups or a set specific time. Convenience, accessibility, self-paced learning experience, and work-education balance are a few benefits of this model. To make sure that students’ expectations, learning needs, and goals are met via asynchronous learning, educators must follow the right strategies. Let us discuss some teaching steps that can be followed in this regard.
Steps for making asynchronous learning effective
1. Set defined expectations and course objectives
Asynchronous learning gives students the opportunity and benefit of learning at their own pace but this doesn’t mean that consistency is not important. You need to set clear expectations for students and must inform them about the same. Explain to students what duties they have to perform, and what learning objectives need to be achieved. You should tell them what time they have to wind up the course syllabus, what skill set they have to develop and the deadlines they have to stick to or adhere to. Focus on the following points like
- Timely assignment submission.
- Giving timely responses.
- Appearing for the formative and summative assessments.
- Being active in online discussions and forums.
2. Make an engaging study material
Other than searching for the best platform to sell online courses, you need to plan well on study material for students. To make an effective course, the study material should be engaging and understandable for students. Make sure to record high-quality video lectures, video presentations, and demonstrations for students. Podcasts can also be recorded to add to the learning resources. Include reading PDFs so that students can understand the topics well. Give access to ebooks for enhancing the self-studies of students.
3. Give a virtual helping hand
We all know real-time interactions with the instructor are not possible in asynchronous learning. In live classes, when students face any difficulty they get doubts solved instantly. This is not the case in asynchronous mode. But this should not affect the learning quality and outcome of the students.
To make sure that your course has been beneficial for them, include a virtual helping hand or online facilitator. Offering regular assistance is important to keep students on the right track. The instant messaging facility on the course website can be done. Or you can give learners email addresses or contact numbers where they can post their queries.
4. Break up the long sessions into smaller units
Yes, visualization is always better than traditional learning methods. But still, watching lengthy videos becomes laborious and boring. Learners have a short attention span, and also focusing on computer screens for a long time becomes more challenging for students. To enrich the learning experience of students, you need to record videos of moderate time duration. Instead of making a single video on the whole lesson, divide it into smaller units. Cover one or a maximum of two topics per video. To make sure that students receive a proper academic understanding, keep your video content short and specific.
5. Include active learning activities
Only watching the video lectures and presentations is not enough. You have to make sure that students know how to apply the knowledge they have gained through your explanations and lectures. To do so, including active learning activities are important. These activities will make students sit, solve, practice, and grow their applicative, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills News.
For example along with a video, and reading PDF, include some questions for practice too. Online quizzes are best suited for this. It can be designed in many forms such as tick the correct option, answer in one word, true or false, fill in the blanks, and more. Make it in a form format and include it in your course study material. Question banks and sample paper PDFs can be attacked too.
Conclusion
Many higher learning students go for asynchronous learning programs. By following the above-mentioned tips, educators can make their asynchronous online courses more effective for students. This will make learning much better, valuable, and understandable for students. With this, students and course success, are ensured.
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