Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Distance Learning

Like many other school districts in Connecticut, the district in which I teach, Thomaston Public Schools, went into distance (or remote) learning mode after Thanksgiving and will remain so at least until mid-January. We started this school year in hybrid learning mode (about half the students came to school on any given day), then shifted in mid-October to having almost all students in school. The change to distance learning after Thanksgiving was triggered by an increase in positive COVID-19 cases among students and staff, and the forecast for more cases after the holidays. We had gone into distance learning mode last March at the outbreak of the pandemic, and remained so through the end of last school year, but the big difference this time is that we are synchronously teaching students now, whereas we taught them asynchronously last spring. What is the difference, and which is better?

Synchronous distance learning means that students and teachers meet online on a regular schedule, and the teacher teaches the lesson live to the students through an online learning platform. Asynchronous distance learning means that students and teachers do not meet on any scheduled basis, but teachers post lessons online, sometimes including instructional videos, that students do independently on their own schedule. Teachers are available to help them on request. Synchronous learning has proven to be better, based on student feedback and performance.

To teach synchronously, Thomaston’s teachers use the Google education suite. We generally use Google Meet to teach our classes online and Google Classroom to post lessons and receive assignments. I teach high school classes, and we have a block schedule where we see students in a given class every other day. The school day starts at 8:30 AM, over an hour later than our old, in person schedule – this was a wise change, as it lets our teenage students start their day at a realistic hour for their body clocks. The earlier schedule was driven by school bus availability, which is not a factor during distance learning. Our classes are 75 minutes long, about ten minutes shorter than the old schedule, but more than enough time to conduct an online class. The school day ends at 2:14 PM, about the same time as the old schedule, so students can have the rest of the afternoon to get outside, work, and study.

Why is synchronous distance learning better than asynchronous? Most students have said that they need the added structure that synchronous learning provides by making them attend class on a schedule, and that they prefer seeing the teacher live rather than watching a video of the lesson or only working independently. Comparing student performance over the past month in synchronous distance learning to their performance last spring when it was asynchronous, it is clear that more students are succeeding in doing the online lessons synchronously. However, this is not to say that students like distance learning just because it is synchronous. Students almost all prefer being in school over any form of distance learning. So how can we teachers make the best of synchronous distance learning?

Based on a survey I gave my students right before we went on winter break, I got their feedback on what I have done that works well for them – here are the key points:

• Organize lessons logically – I plan out units and lessons using the 5E approach (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate), and I have a written plan for every lesson.
  • Planning has been the most time-consuming part of distance learning for me and many other teachers, but it is more important than ever – distance learning is not conducive to “seat of the pants” teaching.
• State lesson expectations clearly – I post every lesson the same way, and I have done this in every mode of learning (hybrid, in person, and distance) since the start of the school year:
  • I post each lesson at 7:30 AM on Google Classroom with directions and all lesson materials attached in case a student misses class and so that any student can refer back to what was taught.
  • I put the learning target and lesson overview, including a description of the final product that the students must turn in, at the beginning of every lesson.
  • I make the final product due date on the next school day at 5:00 PM so that students can take extra time after class to finish – the only exception is a long-term project or assessment that may have a longer due date.
• Keep lessons focused on the main concepts or skills – In the past, I liked to bring in tangential topics occasionally as I taught in the classroom, but that does not work well in distance learning. Therefore, I have discarded many things from my old lesson plans that were not directly part of the main topic.
• Explain concepts clearly and in different ways – I learned long ago to cover key concepts at least three times in three different ways, such as giving an introductory lecture, then having a student centered activity, then showing an outside explanation or video on the topic. I also spiral back and review key concepts in various other lessons where there is a connection. In each case, I try to assess student understanding, and I explain the key concepts over and over.
  • Distance learning is not the time to skimp on direct instruction – students are doing plenty of work independently, so they appreciate the help in understanding new concepts.
  • Few students ever learn effectively through one reading, lecture, or activity – they need repetition, practice, and multiple applications of the concept for it to sink in.
• Continue to use questioning to assess understanding – Getting students to talk and answer questions during an online lesson has been a challenge for many of us. One technique I have used is to pull students out individually on a separate Google Meet while the class is working on an activity – in this way I can question each student and get honest feedback on their understanding.
  • I find a separate Google Meet that I set up on my Google Calendar as a class help session works better than the Breakout Room feature on Google Meet. You can easily monitor two Google Meets simultaneously, but when you join a breakout room, you can’t see the rest of the class without some sort of awkward workaround.

This year of dealing with COVID-19 has made me a better teacher. Working with students online has made me zero in on what is important, then teach it thoroughly. It also has given me a new appreciation of how much I like being with students in person. When the pandemic is over, I hope to continue to use what I have learned.

How to Achieve Excellence during Distance Learning

As a teacher, trying to provide meaningful lessons to my students over the past couple months of distance learning has been challenging. Since our last day of regular school on March 13th, our district has implemented a distance learning plan where students and teachers interact through Google Classroom, and lessons are generally done on a flexible schedule of the student’s choosing, not live. The challenge is to provide lessons that are rigorous, but also understandable without my immediate assistance. While students can contact me for help, the reality is that few do so, so I try to make the lessons as clear and focused as possible. See my previous post about how I have changed my lesson planning.

So should we expect students to do excellent work in these circumstances? Absolutely! It is true that some students will try to do the least amount of work possible, whatever the lesson or the subject is. Nevertheless, many students have excelled in daily lessons, and especially in long term projects. The most notable work I have seen has been in a special science research program that I started in our school this school year. The students in this program commit to doing a three-year science research project. They begin in their sophomore year learning the science research process, choosing a research topic of interest, and finding a mentor. During their junior year, they conduct their research project under their mentor’s oversight. During senior year, they write a college-level research paper documenting their work. They may also work during summer sessions. The program is under the University at Albany’s University in the High School program, so students can earn college credits for the last two years of this program. My students are near the end of their first year in the program, and they just completed a virtual Science Research Symposium, a video where each student presented his or her research project and a brief testimony about their experiences so far in the program. The students put together and edited this video all on their own with each one working from home. Despite the challenges involved, the students produced an excellent product of which our school is very proud.

So what made these science research students produce such excellent work, while the average student working on a much simpler lesson may do only mediocre work? I believe the fundamental reason is one of choice. The students in the research program were guided on how to choose an advanced topic for research and given the tools to conduct that research. This task challenged them, but they had chosen to do it. In contrast, the typical student’s experience is to be given a series of tasks in each class, none of which he or she has chosen or would choose, given the chance. Dr. Maria Montessori created an educational system, the Montessori Method, over 100 years ago that is based on liberty of the child to choose what he or she wants to learn at any given moment, within appropriate boundaries. At first this approach may sound impractical in a modern, American high school – but we can provide quite a bit of choice to students. See my last post on how we can set up a classroom where students can work at their own pace using some of the tools we use now during distance learning. Giving students choice of topics, formats, timing, collaboration and other factors leading to their final product can help them become more motivated to achieve excellence. Quoting Montessori:

“I believe that the work of the educator consists primarily in protecting the powers and directing them without disturbing them in their expansion and in the bringing of man into contact with the spirit which is within him and which should operate through him.”

Dr. Maria Montessori, “The Advanced Montessori Method – Spontaneous Activity in Education,” 1917.

What Happens After Distance Learning?

The school district in which I teach, like most across the nation, has been doing distance learning since mid-March and will do so until the end of the school year. Distance learning is what we call the current situation where students and teachers stay at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and teachers provide lessons online for the students to do on a flexible schedule. My district uses Google Classroom as the online platform where teachers can deliver lessons and assignments, and students can post their work and get graded. At some point, probably in the fall, we will return to school. But what will that look like? Almost everyone in education agrees that we won’t just return to “normal” where the school and its classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, and gym are filled to capacity. With no available cure or vaccine for the COVID-19 virus, there will remain some need for social distancing and other hygiene protocols for some time into the future, and certainly into this coming fall. Even after the virus is under control and there is no more need for any extraordinary measures to combat it, do we want to return to the old way of school? Are there lessons from distance learning that we can apply?

I think the number one lesson that can be taken from the current distance learning experience is that many students can succeed in learning a subject without having the teacher of that subject physically present in front of them. I do not believe that this means we should transition to online learning where students do their lessons by logging into a website and proceeding through a computerized curriculum. While about half the students in various districts are succeeding in distance learning, the other half are struggling at different levels with the situation. These struggling students are having difficulty coping without a teacher present and without the infrastructure they are used to getting in a school classroom. Therefore, we need to have students in school, and we need teachers there to help them – but we don’t necessarily need a different teacher for every subject to see the students every day.

Distance learning has shown us that we can schedule students much more flexibly, and we can use this flexibility in the short-term to provide social distancing and in the long-term to address problems inherent in the old way of doing school. One problem that educators have understood for a long time is that students struggle with a typical middle or high school schedule where they have several different classes throughout the day, and there is little or no relation among the classes. Students are expected to walk from one classroom to another, stop thinking about the previous subject, and start thinking about the next subject – and to remember what they were doing in that subject the last time they had that class. Schools have tried to address this problem with block scheduling where students have half their classes on some days, then the other half of their classes on the other days. However, this means the class periods are twice as long, typically about 90 minutes, so students are expected to sit in a classroom and learn for a time period that is much longer than the average teenager’s attention span.

Now reimagine this situation with what we have learned with distance learning. A student could go to a small number of classrooms each day – maybe even just one or two classrooms per day. In each classroom, the teacher would deliver a short lesson, then post a long term assignment on the online learning platform. The students would work at their own pace on the assignment. The teacher would move through the room helping students with the assignment and answering any questions. Students could work in groups to collaborate on the assignment, as appropriate. If a student was finished in that class, the teacher could allow the student to go to another classroom to get help from another teacher. Teachers would spend less time managing a classroom and more time lesson planning – see my last post for lesson planning ideas from distance learning. Additionally, teachers could collaborate more and create integrated lessons and projects to help students draw connections among various subjects. Teachers of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects could create integrated STEM projects. Teachers of humanities subjects (English, social studies, world languages) could create integrated humanities projects. Teacher teams for each grade level could create integrated grade level projects. There are many possibilities.

This is only one problem that could be addressed using what we have learned from distance learning. As educators we should be working right now to think through these problems and how to solve them. When we return to school, we can use what we have learned from distance learning to improve education. Hoping to return to the old way of doing school is not only a waste of time, but it is a waste of an opportunity. We know the old way of school was far from perfect. We have seen what works with distance learning, so let’s use it to made education better.