What is synchronous online teaching?
Synchronous online teaching takes place in real time via the Internet. It works exactly like face-to-face instruction excepting that the students and the teacher do not need to be located in the same place for the educational process to transpire. Typically, synchronous online teaching takes place through the use of lectures, discussions, and lesson presentations on an online platform at a specific point of time under the assumption that all students will be able available to participate in the teaching-learning session at a given time.
How did I do it?
I used Carmen Connect to conduct my Micro Teaching 1 lesson (Vygotsky and Web 2.0:Powerpoint_narmada). Carmen Connect is a software that can be used to create information and presentations, develop and deliver online training materials, engage in web conferencing, construct and implement learning modules, and share your desktop with others. The meeting room has ‘pods’ which are basically the different features that serve specific communication needs (chat, whiteboard, note, etc.)
Here is a screenshot of Carmen Connect lay-out (click on the image below to enlarge):
Teaching this lesson online required planning in advance. There were two aspects to the planning process:
1. Organizing teaching material and creating appropriate topic relevant activities
2. Making decisions about how to incorporate the various features of Carmen Connect to help in the execution of the lesson plan.
Here is a short description of some of the features of Carmen Connect and how I used them in my teaching –
1. Shared Screen: This feature allows you to share material with other people who are online. I shared my PowerPoint presentation with my classmates using the Shared Screen feature. There is a button on the Share Screen which says ‘Sync’. Pressing ‘Sync’ allowed me to ensure that my peers were looking at the same slide as I was when I was speaking to them.
2. Chat: The chat room allows everyone in the meeting room to communicate with each other instantaneously. During online teaching this is a very useful feature to maintain student engagement. I used it to ask questions aimed at finding out the level of familiarity my peers had with the content. The chat room also allowed some of my peers to ask questions about the content (eg. What is social bookmarking?).
3. Weblink: This feature is used to share links to web resources with other people at the meeting. I used it to share a video clip related to content matter (Tim O’ Reilly defining Web 2.0). While I was preparing my lesson on Carmen Connect, I had realized that the embedded video was not playing during the PowerPoint presentation. The Weblink feature allowed me to share the resource with everyone in class.
4. Breakout rooms: This feature allows you to divide people at the meeting into separate groups so that they can interact with each other. I had used this feature to enable my peers to engage in the group activity (discussion on factors influencing the choice of Web 2.0 tools in education, the role of educator in Web 2.0 learning environments, and the challenges in using Web 2.0 tools).
5. Microphone: This feature enables people at the meeting to talk to each other. I used it to seek responses to questions that involved more elaboration (How was the experience of using Web 2.0 tools as a teacher/student?).
6. Poll: This feature gives one the opportunity to quickly gauge participants’ knowledge, opinion, thoughts, etc. I had used it to collect feedback on the lesson using a multiple choice question format (eg. Was the sequence of the lesson logical?)
What did I learn?
1. I had familiarized myself with the Carmen Connect interface before I actually had to teach a class. This helped me identify potential problems (eg. video not playing) and arrange for back-up (eg. Weblink).
2. I got disconnected while I was in the middle of teaching the lesson. Once I logged back in, I did not have any trouble resuming the lesson only because I had been familiar with the content and the platform. Familiarity with the content and the technology is crucial so that the flow of the lesson is maintained. Otherwise, it is possible that the instruction may get affected as an educator tries to navigate the technology while speaking at the same time.
3. Despite having familiarity with the interface, it is hard to understand how they work unless you actually teach a class. For example, I made each member in the group click on the Weblink separately to view the video clip. After the teaching session I realized that I could have played it on my screen and shared it with my peers. This would have saved time. Also, because some of the participants’ microphones were left ‘on’ while they played the video, this might have caused sound interference for others. This is a situation I had not imagined prior to actually engaging in online teaching with Carmen Connect. So, my take away is that you should do a mock teaching session prior to the actual day of teaching if possible.
4. Time management is challenging as you navigate the technology and deliver content simultaneously. I hadn’t taken into account that I might get disconnected while teaching. After I logged back in, I would have done a better job of managing the time if I had adapted the remaining part of my lesson keeping the time constraint in mind. Teaching online require you to adapt from moment to moment depending on the circumstances.