Modalities of Instruction#
Note
Source Code: teach_online/modalities.md
In this chapter, we will be discussing different modalities of instruction that can incorporate online learning. We will present each modality, and we will discuss how online learning can be effectively utilized in each. This chapter will establish more generalized frameworks of teaching, and future chapters will hone in on specific tasks that can be implemented within those frameworks. We want to emphasize that many of the individual teaching components we describe in each of the following modality descriptions can be used across multiple modalities (e.g. both in-person and online classrooms commonly use online discussion boards and assessments), and we will dive into specific components in later chapters.
Fully In-Person#
While it might seem strange for a resource titled How to Teach Online to begin with a discussion about fully in-person instruction, we wanted to start things off with what is typically the most “traditional” modality of instruction that readers might be most familiar with. In a fully in-person class, all core instruction occurs physically within the classroom. By definition, fully in-person instruction is synchronous: the instructor and the students physically meet at a lecture hall or classroom, and the core instruction occurs synchronously during this in-person meeting time. Of course, instructors of a fully in-person course can choose to include some amount of asynchronous learning, such as having students read/watch materials and solve problems asynchronously before class in a Flipped Classroom framework [2, 3, 4], but the core instructor-to-student interactions still occur synchronously in-person during class time.
The Good#
A primary benefit of fully in-person instruction is that it can make direct interactions between the instructor and the students easier and more natural to facilitate. For example, instructors have the ability to physically move around the classroom, which enables instructors to employ engaging teaching techniques such as Peer Instruction [5, 6, 7] and Small-Group Discussion [8, 9, 10].
The Bad#
A key downside of fully in-person instruction is its inflexibility: it relies on an entire class of students to physically come to the classroom at a specified time. A myriad of issues can prevent students from physically coming to class: illness, family/work obligations, social/personal life issues, commute challenges, etc. [11, 12]. Even factors as small as not wanting to wake up early can be non-trivial barriers to physically coming to class (and a student’s definition of “early” might differ dramatically from an instructor’s!).
Another key limitation of fully in-person instruction is that it does not scale well: an instructor can easily interact with every student in a classroom of 20 students, maybe even 50 students, but when a classroom hits hundreds of students, it becomes infeasible for the instructor to directly interact with every single student. Employing innovative pedagogical techniques such as Micro-Classes [13] can help improve the scalability of in-person instruction, but these methods typically require significant staff resources at scale.
Fully Online#
In contrast to fully in-person instruction, a class can be structured in a fully online modality. Specifically, in a fully online class, all interactions occur online: there are no in-person interactions whatsoever. Unlike with fully in-person instruction, in which all core instruction is by definition synchronous, the core instruction in a fully online class can be synchronous, asynchronous, or a mix of both.
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous#
In synchronous fully online instruction, “classroom” instruction is conducted in a manner similar to in-person instruction: students meet with the instructor at a specified time, and instructor-to-student interactions look very similar to how they look in-person (including the potential for traditional lecture vs. Flipped Classroom), but held virtually via video conferencing tools rather than in a physical classroom.
In asynchronous fully online instruction, all instructor-to-student interactions are fully asynchronous. They commonly take the form of prerecorded videos, but they can also take the form of text-based interactions, such as reading instructional materials written by the instructor (like you’re doing right now!) and/or online chat or discussion board.
In practice, (good) fully online instruction typically employs a combination of synchronous and asynchronous instruction. For example, a fully online classroom may have synchronous class time as well as mandatory asynchronous online discussion. Further, instructors who hold synchronous sessions in a fully online classroom can record these sessions so students who are unable to attend synchronously can watch recordings according to their own schedule.
The Good#
A key benefit of fully online instruction is its flexibility: students can participate from any location they prefer. For example, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to travel restrictions placed by various countries’ governments, my classes had students from literally all over the world. This made synchronous online learning somewhat tricky, but by having my instructional team provide Office Hours all throughout the day (this was a benefit of my massive class sizes: massive enrollment = massive instructional team = plenty of Office Hours to spread throughout the day), meaning any student had at least some Office Hours during reasonable waking hours of their day. Less extreme than the global shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, as described earlier, students may have difficulties coming to a physical classroom on campus due to many reasons, and online instruction (even synchronous) reduces the barrier to entry for these students.
Even beyond the flexibility with regard to physical location that is enjoyed by online instruction in general, asynchronous online instruction enjoys the benefit of temporal flexibility: students can interact with the course in a way that fits into their own unique schedule. This can be critical for engaging students with other significant time constraints (e.g. family/work obligations). It can also enable flexibility with regard to class scheduling (e.g. being able to enroll in classes that have conflicting synchronous times if asynchronous options are available), which could prevent delays in coursework and reduce time-to-degree.
The Bad#
A major limitation of fully online instruction is that it can be incredibly difficult for an instructor to engage students, and it is arguably more difficult to create a sense of community among the students in the class. In-person instruction benefits from small casual interactions (e.g. chatting with the people sitting near you, or chatting with classmates before/after class) that can be incredibly helpful for connecting students to each other. In fully online courses, there are ways to try to create a sense of community among the students (and we will dive more deeply into these methods in later chapters), but despite these efforts, students still tend to not connect with other students in the class.
Another key limitation is the ability to maintain Academic Integrity: with in-person classes, at least some assessments (e.g. exams) can be proctored in-person assessments, but fully online courses by definiton have fully online assessments, and it can be difficult to prevent student cheating. We will discuss ways in which student collaboration and cheating can be detecting in online assessments (including in unproctored online exams), but this is an incredible challenge for instructors.
Hybrid#
As can be seen in the discussion above, fully in-person and fully online instruction each have their respective pros and cons. As a wise little girl in an Old El Paso commercial once said about hard vs. soft tacos, ¿Por qué no los dos? (Why not both?) (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 “Why not both?” meme.#
In a hybrid class, instruction happens both in-person and online. This mixture of in-person and online instruction can take many forms. For example, depending on how it’s structured, an in-person Flipped Classroom can be considered a form of hybrid learning: after self-learning the topics prior to a given in-person class session (e.g. watching videos or reading instructional text, solving quizzes, etc.) and are then actively engaging with the course staff and their peers online before class (e.g. self-scheduled face-to-face online meetings with course staff and/or peers, asynchronous discussion board posts, etc.), this could be considered a form of hybrid instruction.
For me personally, the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to learn how to broadcast an interactive classroom session on Zoom: I have learned how to effectively use Zoom’s features (e.g. monitoring the Zoom chat, screen-sharing, annotations, whiteboard, polls, automated recording, etc.), and I have brought those techniques into my in-person classrooms. Specifically, in my in-person classes, I broadcast my class on Zoom while I am teaching in-person, and I actively monitor questions in the Zoom chat while soliciting in-person students. I will talk more about specific techniques I employ in-class later in a later chapter, but the result is that some students participate fully in-person, some students participate fully online in a synchronous manner via Zoom, and some students participate fully online asynchronously via recordings.
HyFlex#
I want to briefly revisit the following comment I made about my hybrid courses:
[…] some students participate fully in-person, some students participate fully online in a synchronous manner via Zoom, and some students participate fully online asynchronously via recordings.
Interestingly, these 3 categories of participation are not mutually exclusive! On the contrary, very few students actually stuck to a single category for the entire course. Instead, most students typically participated in a blend of all 3 categories: sometimes attend class in-person, sometimes attend class synchronously on Zoom, and sometimes miss synchronous class but asynchronously watch the recordings. Rather than forcing students to commit to either in-person or online participation for the entire course, HyFlex (Hybrid-Flexible) course design allows students to flexibly choose between in-person or online participation [14]. The fundamental values in HyFlex design are the following [15]:
Learner Choice: Provide meaningful participation modalities between which students can choose
Equivalency: Ensure that learning outcomes are equivalent across modalities
Reusability: Capture learning activities in each mode to reuse in other modalities
Accessibility: Ensure that all students are equipped with the necessary technology access and skills to have equitable access to all participation modalities
Glossary#
- Flipped Classroom#
A teaching method in which students read/watch learning materials and work on problems asynchronously before class, and in-class time is reserved for problem solving, discussion, and other activities [2].
- HyFlex#
Short for “Hybrid-Flexible”: a model of course design that allows students to flexibly choose between in-person or online participation [14].
- Micro-Classes#
Pre-assigned small groups of students led by an Instructional Assistant that remain the same throughout the entire course [13].
- Peer Instruction#
A teaching method in which each student applies the core concepts, and then explains those concepts to their classmates [5].
- Small-Group Discussion#
In-class discussions among small groups of students (not necessarily pre-assigned), potentially facilitated by members of the instructional staff [8].