Students Embrace Synchronous Learning

For close to 2 years now, I have been working with a number of faculty and instructional staff to bring synchronous learning to our e-learning campus. Like any new technology, I had early adopters, the wait and sees or WASs, and those that well, let’s just say preferred not to use synchronous technology at all. There was one group that I had forgotten about. A group that is probably the most important--the students.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m never surprised by the folks that are willing to be one of the first to implement a new technology in their classroom. The biggest reason for adding synchronous learning to our campus’s toolbox was that we had a rather large group of faculty members that refused to use asynchronous technologies alone. They wanted to have direct real-time access to their students. My initial thought was that this was the missing piece. The magic bullet that would bring all faculty members into the distance learning fold.

Two years passed, and the synchronous environment is finally beginning to take off. We have a number of faculty using our synchronous tool Elluminate Live, in a variety of ways. Many use it to conduct lectures at a distance. Some hold virtual office hours. Still others are capturing their face-to-face lectures and then sending out a link or even using RSS to create Vodcast archives of their lectures. Students can then review and make-up work. I have also worked hard to establish some partnerships between faculty members and our campus tutoring center. We now offer limited tutoring sessions in English and Statistics.

While faculty have not been the quickest to embrace this modality, students seem to love it! I’m certain there is a level of novelty to all of this, but students are quick to notice the necessity of such a tool. After “attending” a course meeting via Elluminate Live, a group of students asked if they might use the tool to facilitate their group meetings. We are currently using this student group as a pilot.

The day after the students met for the first time on their own in Elluminate Live, I watched the session via the automatically generated recording link. I would give the session a mixed review. The student that agreed to be the moderator had done their homework. Facilitating the group’s discussion using the technology went off without a hitch. If what I was seeing was an indicator of future performance, I was concerned that the group wouldn’t stay on track and use their time wisely. However, by the time the group requested their second session, they had figured out that in order to be successful as a group, as well as take advantage of Elluminate Live’s tools, they had to have a larger part of their assigned work completed prior to meeting online.

Now, this might not seem like a complicated concept. Stop and think about all the meetings you have attended in the face-to-face format. How many times have those meetings never achieved what they were supposed to? More often than not, you walk out of these meetings feeling dumber than when you went in.

As far as I know there is no technological tool on the face of the earth that will prepare your work and deliver it for you. But the use of synchronous tools like Elluminate Live help facilitate group member buy-in to a process and project.

This synchronous tool helped students realize something very early on. They needed to work closely as a group, take ownership of a piece of the work, and be ready to present their work. Regardless of the subject matter, these career skills will help them perform their jobs as employees. This kind of first-hand group experience is the type of thing that employers have been asking of Higher education providers for at least the last ten years.

From an academic standpoint synchronous tools allow students to set meeting times that are convenient for them. They allow the student be in a comfortable physical environment, such as their home, and to have access to all of their work in the same location as their communication tool--their computer! All of these attributes combine to make synchronous communication a welcome addition to our virtual campus. It helps to build community, but most importantly, it helps the learner.

Useful Link:

http://www.elluminate.com

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