One of the first things to consider when thinking about creating community and engaging with your students is synchronous and asynchronous opportunities that you’ll want to create in your course structure.
- Synchronous experiences happen in real-time. This might look like a Zoom or live Twitter chat with your students. Maybe you are sharing a document and everyone is contributing to the knowledge building and feedback at the same time or there is group work that requires collaborative lab participation. The communication is happening simultaneously and in a shared space.
- Asynchronous experiences happen on your own time. This might look like a module that’s open in D2L for learners to complete at their own pace during the week, discussion boards, independent labs and simulations, weekly or bi-weekly feedback to students, or emails. The communication is not simultaneous. Instead, everyone can access content, communicate, and/or contribute at a time that works best for them while adhering to the deadlines that were communicated.
Many online courses are set up to be asynchronous but offer synchronous opportunities. Something for you to consider if you include synchronous opportunities is whether they’ll be optional or required. If you require 3 synchronous sessions per semester, you might schedule 5 sessions total so that students have the ability to participate based on their schedules.