3.8 Case study (Time)

Beyond the time zone differences, what are the challenges in what the instructor is proposing?
How would you be able to frame the synchronous event with pre and post event activity?
How would you approach this for your own course?

My first reaction is: this is a nightmare! -8h, +8h, arghhhh

1. The students who were not in Edinburgh seemed to think that their opinions didn’t matter as much: so a big challenge is to make it clear to students that it’s not because the course is based in Edinburgh that this is the most important time zone.

Another challenge is participation, if you expect all students to participate equally you need to find a solution which suits them all and there might not be just one solution.

We will also have to make it clear to student when we are available to answer emails, for instance, and make sure they translate this for their own time zones. I usually tell students that it can take up to three days to answer emails and that I do not check my emails on Saturday and Sunday, students will have to understand that my Saturday and Sunday will be different from theirs! So we need good i.e. clear communication.

2. Perhaps have a forum with a few thinking points before the synchronous event and for post event another forum with learning points?

3. Lectures would be synchronous and cycled weekly so that all students have an opportunity to attend at least 3 (out of 10) sessions synchronously. Of course this only work if we have the whole cohort online. If some students are physically present in Edinburgh and we have to teach those f2f then we have a problem.

Main lectures can be recorded on Collaborate and then can make the recordings available.

Forums can be organised for after the lectures taking into consideration time zones: we can wait for all time zones to have had a chance to consider the threads and then comment, etc.

For Google hangouts we could cycle a 1 or 2h slot throughout the semester so that all students are treated ‘equally’ and do not feel that U.K. /EU based students are more valued.

So cycling lectures/classes/Google hangouts and making recording available feels like the fairest option. Discussion threads can be asynchronous with a timeframe attached to them of a few days, if teaching sessions weekly (so every week has a different topic).