Are You In Sync?

After watching *NSYNC in an asynchronous manner such as YouTube, it got me thinking about how I've been using synchronous tools lately.

With the growth of technologies, such as Second Life, we are seeing more and more emphasis on synchronous teaching methods.  For those of you who don't know, this means you are interacting with your students in real time.  Examples of synchronous teaching include:

• SecondLife
• Instant Messaging
• Chat
• Meeting Software

One big advantage of using synchronous activities is the students get feedback immediately from a human teacher.  This gives the students more of a connection to the course and they don't have to wait for feedback.

Sounds great, right?  The problem is many students have signed up for classes to fit around their busy schedules. So, when do you schedule the synchronous activities to where everyone can attend?  Or do you schedule multiple sessions?  With multiple sessions, is it worth the additional time commitment?

These are tough questions you have to sort out with your content.  Here's some ideas:

Have IM office hours- I open a public IM account and let my students ping me when they want to talk about the course.  Students have to do the initiation, but I can be doing other things online during this time instead of just waiting.

Scheduled Chat Reviews- Right before a big exam, have a couple of different times students can stop in and chat with you.  The problem is you are more committed to the activity than IM.  On the other hand, students are likely to interact with each other more.  These can be done through D2L or any number of Web2.0 tools.

Second Life- I haven't done this, but you could set up a time to meet up with your class in Second Life.  This way, you can have audio as well as text chat.

Elluminate- You can schedule a session through Elluminate and meet with some or all of your students in a meeting environment.  You can share your screen and have students interact with you through text and/or voice.  You can also record the session for later review.

Honestly, I haven't been as good at synchronous activities since moving away from teaching nights.  I used to be able to open my IM and sit back in the office and wait for students.  It's proven much tougher for me since going 8-5 last fall.  (I just am tired and don't want to login during the evening hours most students area available.)  I'm hoping to find something soon as I do think it adds to my classes.