Asynchronous Tools Online Trends and Advanced Tools By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano Sunday, October 4, 2015 Twitter: @jonacuso Post 191
As part of online learning, it is necessary to use asynchronous tools that can allow students to comply with coursework tasks based on their own schedule and with ample time to reflect upon the subject-matter. Flexibility in their schedule and enough time for reflections can guarantee some more in-depth response when one gets to remove the time constraint provided in a F2F teaching environment. For these three essential reasons in hybrid learning and teaching, I have constantly employed blogs and wikis to help students achieve course objectives and some sort of work-readiness training in language teaching. For these reasons, since “there are a number of technologies that can be used with online instruction to facilitate communication among students and the instructor” (West Virginia University, n.d.), knowing some characteristics of these tools such as wikis
and blogs, “enables an instructor to adopt the best tool for his or her purpose” (West Virginia University, n.d.).
Common Tool Chart (West Virginia University, n.d.) As most of us know, blogs and wikis can be used to account for a lot of different learning tasks with one’s students. Though most teachers may be employing blogs to share information with learners, I actually have students create their own blogs for reflection and for posting coursework. Because of the many different features a platform like blogger.com, or weebly.com, provides users, their projects can turn more interactive and creative than a simple static printed page on bond paper. They have found the training in this tool useful considering that in language teaching they can also use this asynchronous tool to work with their future students. A blog can also be used as “an online journal that can be made public or private. Students can use blogs to create an online portfolio, post reflections, turn in projects or assignments and receive feedback from the instructor” or their peers (Angelo State University, n.d.). Blogs can have indeed many uses within our online, blended or hybrid teaching scenarios. On the other hand, wikis are another interactive and different way to have students work on projects and submit coursework. “Wikis are similar to other types of online communication tools, such as blogs and threaded discussions, in that these are all asynchronous forms of communication” (West & West, 2009). As a language professor teaching the potential uses of technology in English language teaching (ELT), I like
students to sample a bit of what a wiki can do for them as instructors or as learners. Wikis can become a good substitute of an LMS at a small scale when you have just a limited number of students in the classroom. They can be used to share information in various formats (video, pdf, mp3, you name it), and they can be used to have students post their homework to be graded. In terms of work-readiness, by the time they finish our teaching program, their technological is superior to students in other local universities. The possibilities in the use of asynchronous tools is endless. We just need to assess what needs to be achieved in a course to find the tools that can be used to have students efficiently achieve course learning goals. At the beginning, the use of these tools can be a bit difficult, but with a pinch of patience and another pinch of desire to have students learn, lots can be achieved in a hybrid or online course.
References Angelo State University. (n.d.). Online Learning Tools: Asynchronous Communication Tools. Retrieved from ASU e-Learning: https://www.angelo.edu/services/elearning/faculty_resources/Online_Teaching/section_31.php West Virginia University. (n.d.). WVU Online and Extended Campus. Retrieved from Tips of Teaching Online: http://online.wvu.edu/Faculty/Resources/TeachingOnline/ West, J., & West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.