Time-Shifting in the Age of Dr. Who: Designing Interactive Asynchronous Skills and Seminar Courses

Speaker(s):

Working with course designers provided by Indiana University through its IU Online initiative, we are designing fully asynchronous online classes to replace live skills and seminar experiences. The tools available for asynchronous communication offer greater flexibility in terms of the type and amount of interaction among the students; between the instructor and the students; and between the students and the course materials. Asynchronous teaching creates a robust set of artifacts for assessing student performance. With well-articulated requirements for student engagement and a sophisticated rubric for assessing the quality of student engagement, we are finding it may be possible to enforce a higher standard of student engagement and more creative opportunities for transfer of learning than can be enforced in either live or synchronous environments.

Skills and theory-based seminar courses differ in fundamental respects, perhaps most clearly in the learning outcomes. However, two features of our courses are strikingly similar. First is a design process that pays detailed attention to granular outcomes and corresponding assessments. Second is a need for interactivity. Our design and teaching experiences suggest carefully planned asynchronous online teaching enables the achievement of learning outcomes as well as or better than the live classroom.

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