Module 3 notes

Contact time: defining for online purpose.

‘Contact time generally refers to the tutor-mediated time allocated to teaching or providing guidance and feedback to students. Online contact time can be synchronous using real-time environments (such as Collaborate, Teams) or asynchronous (using tools such as moderated discussion forums, blogs, Padlet, and more). Online contact time is characterised by personalised tutor presence and input within a specified time-frame.’

For me: ‘block off time on your calendar for course engagement, for engaging with discussion boards, summarising the week’s events, or even for a synchronous session’

For students: Clear expectations: make it clear to students ‘in your course descriptors or weekly summaries. Be responsive to needs that arise outside the scope of these scheduled bits of time, but nobody is expecting you to work on weekends, to answer queries past a certain time. This is about a sustained and responsive presence, not an omnipresent one. Schedule it, manage it as best as possible, and be ready to adapt as needed.’

Engagement and time spent online: ‘We shouldn’t inherently equate time online with an achieved learning outcome. It could be something else: a sick family member, a particularly difficult week of work, a power outage. You can encourage students to let you know when life gets in the way and impacts their engagement; it is a good practice of care. It is also a form of time management in and of itself. Time online and performance might positively correlate for some; for others, it won’t. Noticing the difference is very difficult without an engaged teaching presence’

Synchronous v. Asynchronous

‘online synchronous work should be thought of as a supplement to asynchronous work (discussion boards, blogs, etc.). It can be used to establish contact time, to mitigate transactional distance, to provide a diversity of learning experiences, and to cohere what is being presented and discussed asynchronously, all of which might improve the student experience. However, it is important to embrace the fact that we aren’t merely porting over our face to face classes online. Synchronous activity shouldn’t be the sum total of the student experience online.

So both sync and a sync. Complementing one another. But for me it’s the other round: ‘online asynchronous work (e.g. discussion boards, blogs, etc.) supplement to synchronous work.

For the MSc in TS, I would still like to be able to do lectures synchronously (2h, cycled because of time zones ), and have prompts, forums & hangouts for the asynchronous type. This could be done in collaboration with the tutors.

For smaller classes, like Portfolio, I would do it synchronously (1h) and then have a couple of points/challenges to discuss for the students to discuss in a forum but with very light touch intervention from me. Something like ‘after the class, how else would you translate these two words’.

Video and audio: Collaborate or Teams (videos need good internet connection).

Decide at programme level what we will use, e.g. portfolio, so all tutors use the same.

Training sessions: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/more/teaching-continuity/training

Use Collaborate to record synchronous sessions.