Synchronous
Conversation,
A Reflection
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña
Solano
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Twitter: @jonacuso
Post 205
When asked about the successes and challenges I experienced during the Laureate Faculty Development’s
Hybrid and Blended Learning Certificate training, I must confess that there are
more successes than any other thing. Even today my personal satisfaction with
this instructional model continues to be fruitful and very successful, I
continue to believe that this educational model remains incredibly interesting
and a field that needs to be researched much more. On the other hand, when I
dropped in the certificate online classes, lots of the data proposed to us
participants were not new to me. I had been trying out some sort of online
learning with my language students at Universidad Latina ever since I studied
through the Distant Education Program, at the English Language Institute,
University of Oregon. What the Laureate certificate has given me is the
rationale and theory I was lacking to ground my teaching practices today much
more effectively and soundly.
Through this certificate I expanded
and continue expanding lots of the basic concepts proposed by my two
instructors at the University of Oregon, Sandra Jeffs and Deborah Healy, who
guided my first steps into this virtual learning/teaching journey. Because of
these two professors I got confronted with the LoTi Assessment (LOTI Levels of Technology Integration, n.d.) , and then –as a
language instructor- I made the decision to become much better in the use of
technology. Due to my in-depth analysis of LoTi and my former training with the
University of Oregon and with a Language Fellow, Skye McLeod, appointed to Costa
Rica by the Department of State of the US, I started carrying out empirical
blended language teaching and learning for my students at the university by
creating several Web pages with content for my courses, which ended up being
open 24/7 and beyond the course time boundaries.
LoTi
Diagram (LOTI Levels of Technology Integration, n.d.)
When introduced to the Universidad
Latina’s Moodle platform, I was really quick in starting to use all possible
tools provided by the system. I have come to a point in my professional
development and practice in which my courses are some sort of a “flipped
classroom” where we come to class to discuss projects and results, but via
online I provide whatever I consider necessary for them to complete learning
tasks and fulfil the learning outcomes that have been traced per each week of
work. The experience has been quite satisfactory and fulfilling, too. I have
also learned lots from my empirical attempts and from my students who have been
willing to be guided and taught in this way. This has been the greatest
achievement or success with my content and language courses at the university.
And the Laureate Certificate has given me a much wider understanding of what
initiated almost eight years ago, back in January 2008.
While working on one of the modules of
the certificate, to have us experience what it meant to be part of synchronous
communication, we were asked to get together online despite our location on the
planet or our time zone. In terms of the tool used for a synchronous meeting
with some of my online partners in the certificate, I suggested using
AnyMeeting.Com, a free virtual classroom service that can hold up to 100
participants at the same time. As for its advantages, AnyMeeting.Com allows you
to create a virtual meeting room where the host can send as many invitations as
there are participants. Anyone can join the classroom and be able to be seen by
other participants (as long as they have their webcam on); meeting guests are
able to chat while the host is talking (There is a small place to chat and post
questions for the speaker.); and anyone can be promoted to be a speaker and to
share from videos to documents with the rest of the partners. Its only two
drawbacks in its free version is that AnyMeeting.Com has advertisements on the
right side of the meeting room (since it is sponsored to be used freely by
anyone) and does not allow you to record the meeting (a feature for paying
users). But aside from that, there are no issues to complain about. It will
remind participants via email, one day before the meeting starts that they have
to sign into the classroom without having to sign in for an account.
“Synchronous learning environments
support learning and teaching and offer students and teachers with multiple
ways of interacting, sharing, and the ability to collaborate and ask questions
in real-time through synchronous learning technologies” (Higley, n.d.) . Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)
should not be the exception to become a way to propitiate deep learning
experiences to our students; they should be fair grounds for life-long lasting
learning that can become applicable in any hybrid, online or blended teaching
scenario, especially when using “synchronous learning technologies” that can
potentiate this deep learning we instructors want to see among our learners
competencies.
References
Higley, M. (n.d.). Benefits of Synchronous and Asynchronous e-Learning. Retrieved from eLearning Industry:
http://elearningindustry.com/benefits-of-synchronous-and-asynchronous-e-learning
LOTI Levels of Technology Integration. (n.d.). Retrieved from Educational Origami:
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/LOTI
Saturday, November 07, 2015
