Category: Instructional Design

Synchronous vs asynchronous learning

3/19/2021

Synchronous and asynchronous are basic terms when it comes to online or distance learning. When the pandemic struck, teaching and learning activities were shifted online. Whether you like it or not, that is the only option left.

But after almost a year of being under this new norm, we should have mastered the arts and science of planning, selecting, conducting, and assessing our online and distance classes. When is it suitable to conduct a synchronous session? What are learning activities and techniques should we use when you have a large group of students in your Google Meet class? How to ensure students' engagement throughout the session? How can you guarantee collaborative learning to take place when students are learning from a distance? These are among the examples of questions that need to be deliberately answered by all of us, educators.

My heartfelt thanks to SieQa committee for this invitation. I had fun sharing my little insights on this topic :)

A week before the seminar, we had a quick catch up with the organising committee. Dr Ooi briefed us the tentative and how the sessions would be organised.

And these are among the participants who attended the session. Thanks for joining!

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Redesigning a Meaningful Online Learning for Learners

12/6/2020

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I was invited to present a keynote speech for 2020 IEEE Conference on e-Learning, e-Management and e-Services (IC3e2020) that took place on 17th November 2020. Redesigning a Meaningful Online Learning for Learners: Where Do We Start and Where Do We Go? - that was the title of my presentation. Everybody is talking about shifting teaching to online mode but little that we know that the shift needs a planned modification, not only related to the content delivery alone. Rather, it involves more aspects - students' actual needs and capacity (cognitive as well as their technology affordances), learning experiences to suit the objectives, a choreography of activities so as to ensure active learning to take place and not forgotten, the aspect of assessment.

I also highlighted the importance of identifying the root of the problem that is to be addressed by using a performance discrepancy analysis. This is a core approach taken by all instructional designers. Without understanding the actual cause of students' performance, we will never be able to provide them a remedy. Being an educator is not easy huh, but if you love your profession, I bet this process will give you abundance of blissful satisfaction as you know what you are doing, and why you choose to do it :)