Teaching Modalities

Gone are the days when teach­ing in a class­room or a large lec­ture hall was the only option. Today, our ‘class­rooms’ can take on mul­ti­ple forms. In this sec­tion, we’ll explore dif­fer­ent dig­i­tal teach­ing modal­i­ties:

• What they are
• Brief impli­ca­tions for teach­ing

Modal­i­ties include:

1. Asyn­chro­nous­ly (DLU-Unsched­uled)
2. Syn­chro­nous­ly (DLS-Sched­uled)
3. Blend­ed (B‑Blended)

Teach­ing Asyn­chro­nous­ly — An asyn­chro­nous course has no required live online inter­ac­tions and sched­uled con­tact time between instruc­tor and stu­dents.

• Stu­dents par­tic­i­pate and com­mu­ni­cate in the course with­out need­ing to be online simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. How­ev­er, the instruc­tor is very much present, engag­ing in fre­quent (a cou­ple of times a week) com­mu­ni­ca­tions with stu­dents, shar­ing video and email updates, and facil­i­tat­ing the learn­ing expe­ri­ences
• Teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties occur in dig­i­tal for­mats using a vari­ety of learn­ing tech­nolo­gies and dig­i­tal resources
• The course is char­ac­ter­ized by reg­u­lar and sub­stan­tive online inter­ac­tions between the course instruc­tor and stu­dents
• The instruc­tor defines expec­ta­tions and dead­lines for com­ple­tion of assign­ments and oth­er course-relat­ed activ­i­ties
• Stu­dents may have to inter­mit­tent­ly work in groups with oth­er stu­dents or under­take col­lab­o­ra­tive activ­i­ties, but these can be done asyn­chro­nous­ly
• Midterms, tests, and quizzes, includ­ing any final exams, take place dig­i­tal­ly via a vari­ety of for­mats. If a final exam is sched­uled for the course, the exam will take place dig­i­tal­ly on a cer­tain day/time accord­ing to the insti­tu­tion­al exam sched­ule
• There may be option­al live, online office hours and/or group times as part of the course; how­ev­er, these are not manda­to­ry

Advan­tages of Asyn­chro­nous Cours­es:

• More acces­si­ble for stu­dents who have family/work com­mit­ments, live in dif­fer­ent time zones, and/or observe diverse cul­tur­al prac­tices (e.g., reli­gious obser­vances that do not fol­low the typ­i­cal col­lege cal­en­dar)
• Greater acces­si­bil­i­ty for stu­dents with­out access to reli­able Inter­net
• Eas­i­er for stu­dents for whom Eng­lish is not their first lan­guage to engage with the resources and to com­mu­ni­cate, as there is more time to reflect and respond

Teach­ing Syn­chro­nous­ly — The course has required real-time, live online inter­ac­tions and reg­u­lar class con­tact time sched­uled between the instruc­tor and stu­dents. The course is char­ac­ter­ized by reg­u­lar and sub­stan­tive dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions between the course instruc­tor and stu­dents, which occur both in the live class­es and through dig­i­tal con­tent and activ­i­ties. Oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics include:

• Teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties occur in dig­i­tal for­mats using a vari­ety of learn­ing tech­nolo­gies and dig­i­tal resources
• Class focus­es on con­cur­rent, col­lec­tive, and col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing amongst stu­dents
• There are defined dead­lines for com­ple­tion of assign­ments and oth­er course-relat­ed activ­i­ties
• Stu­dents may have to inter­mit­tent­ly work in groups with oth­er stu­dents or under­take col­lab­o­ra­tive activ­i­ties, and these can be done both in live online ses­sions and offline through oth­er dig­i­tal tools at times that work well for all group mem­bers
• Midterms, tests, and quizzes, includ­ing any final exams, take place dig­i­tal­ly via a vari­ety of for­mats
• If a final exam is sched­uled for the course, the exam takes place dig­i­tal­ly on a cer­tain day/time accord­ing to the insti­tu­tion­al exam sched­ule
• There may be option­al live, online office hours

Advan­tages of Syn­chro­nous Cours­es:

• Imme­di­a­cy — stu­dents can ask ques­tions and get feed­back in real time
• Real-time social inter­ac­tion for sup­port, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, dis­cus­sion, shar­ing, and insights
• In some cas­es, it’s eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy which stu­dents are engaged and which may be strug­gling (e.g., from visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion cues such as tone and facial expres­sions if stu­dents have their cam­eras switched on — although this arti­cle offers use­ful insights into why we should­n’t force stu­dents to switch on their cam­eras)

Blend­ed Teach­ing at NIC — Teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties occur in the on-cam­pus class­room and in dig­i­tal for­mats using a vari­ety of learn­ing tech­nolo­gies and dig­i­tal resources. The course has sched­uled and required in-class instruc­tion and con­tact time between the instruc­tor and stu­dents.

• The course also has reg­u­lar dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions between the course instruc­tor and stu­dents
• The amount of time for the dig­i­tal activ­i­ty vs. the in-class activ­i­ty is set by the instruc­tor and varies by course
• Blend­ed cours­es often have con­tent deliv­ered in dig­i­tal for­mats, leav­ing the in-class time for appli­ca­tion activ­i­ties, expe­ri­en­tial and hands-on learn­ing, along with spe­cif­ic assess­ments
• There are defined expec­ta­tions and dead­lines for com­ple­tion of assign­ments and oth­er course-relat­ed activ­i­ties, both for the on-cam­pus class­es and dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions
• Stu­dents may have to work in groups with oth­er stu­dents or do col­lab­o­ra­tive activ­i­ties. Group activ­i­ties may be done dur­ing in-class and/or via dig­i­tal for­mat inter­ac­tions
• Midterms, tests, and quizzes, includ­ing any final exam, take place dig­i­tal­ly via a vari­ety of for­mats. If a final exam is sched­uled for the course, the exam takes place dig­i­tal­ly on a cer­tain day/time accord­ing to the insti­tu­tion­al exam sched­ule
• There may be option­al real-time office hours as part of the course

Tips for plan­ning, orga­niz­ing, and exe­cut­ing blend­ed cours­es to engage stu­dents:

1. Use in-class learn­ing expe­ri­ences for hands-on, applied, and prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ences
2. Use in-class learn­ing expe­ri­ences for assess­ments and demon­stra­tions of learn­ing that need to be observed, done with mate­ri­als, or in envi­ron­ments that have spe­cial­ized resources
3. Put all con­tent engage­ment, read­ing, watch­ing, and pas­sive learn­ing expe­ri­ences into the dig­i­tal for­mat
4. Have stu­dents engage in small assess­ments (e.g., a short quiz, a post in the dis­cus­sion forum, a video sum­ma­ry) before arriv­ing for in-class learn­ing. In this way, you can see where you may need to re-teach or re-empha­size cer­tain learn­ing that may not have been suc­cess­ful­ly obtained
5. For more tips on blend­ed learn­ing, click on Blend­ed Learn­ing

For more infor­ma­tion, down­load the PDFs below:

NIC-Deliv­ery-For­mats - Pro­vides infor­ma­tion on the dif­fer­ent deliv­ery modal­i­ties along with tips for teach­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with stu­dents

Matrix-for-NIC-Dig­i­tal-Learn­ing-For­mats-Char­ac­ter­is­tics - Pro­vides a quick com­par­i­son of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges of each modal­i­ty 

Matrix-for-NIC-Dig­i­tal-Appli­ca­tions-for-Design-and-Learn­ing - Pro­vides tips for assess­ment, pre­sen­ta­tion of con­tent, and best ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with and engag­ing stu­dents across each modal­i­ty

Impor­tant Con­sid­er­a­tions

1. FIPPFA — Pri­va­cy of stu­dent infor­ma­tion — Pro­tect­ing the Pri­va­cy of Stu­dent Data: Required Actions for Com­pli­ance with BC’s FIPPA Law. To under­stand fac­ul­ty respon­si­bil­i­ties in com­ply­ing with FIPPA, click on Poli­cies & Pro­ce­dures — FIPPA.  Also check out: NIC-Main­tain­ing-Pri­va­cy-while-Sup­port­ing-Inno­va­tion.

2. Data Reten­tion Process — 2 Years for Cours­es & Videos. To main­tain effi­cient and secure learn­ing plat­forms, NIC fol­lows a two-year reten­tion sched­ule for Bright­space and Kaltura con­tent. For more infor­ma­tion, click on Data Reten­tion Pol­i­cy