Videoconferencing
A tool to connect students and instructors through web-based video platforms that include:
- Teaching remote and face-to-face students simultaneously
- Teaching individual and face-to-face students simultaneously
- Everyone on their own computer but attending a live session through videoconferencing platform (like BlueJeans)
Synchronous learning
Components of the course are taught “live” online and students are required to attend a session virtually with their peers and instructor.
There are a variety of tools that instructors and students can use to participate in these sessions such as: text chats, web-conferencing platforms (with or without video) and cloud-based collaborative sessions.
Asynchronous learning
Assigned tasks that students complete in their own time. These tasks often operate on a schedule with deadlines.
Asynchronous courses are generally hosted on a learning management system, and direct students to read content in textbooks, and print and screen modules; watch videos and pre-recorded lectures; participate in discussion boards; complete an offline, place-based task; and post assignments. Instructors may still host office hours and meet students (on or offline).
Self-paced
A self-paced course may or may not have an instructor assigned to it. If an instructor is assigned to the self-paced course, they are available to answer questions, clarify complex concepts, and provide tutorials as needed. They may also counsel and support student goal setting. A self-paced course normally has a maximum time allowed, but students can finish earlier than this.
Face-to-face learning
When the instructor and students are physically in the same place for the course, or components of the course.
Blended learning
Some contact hours are kept as face-to-face which can be spread out through the course, front-loaded, or wrapped around.
Advantages of Distributed Learning
- Long lectures can be presented into smaller sessions and recorded.
- Provides flexibility to learn how and where students want.
- Drives pedagogical innovation, creativity, and more learning-centered approaches.
- Has the potential to expand the reach of the curriculum beyond the classroom and textbook and into the real world.
- Students have time to think about, and pour meaning into, content and ideas.
- Reaches people who otherwise couldn’t attend in person.
- Adds voices from diverse contexts.
- Instruction can happen from anywhere.