Preparing for Synchronous Sessions
Starting to plan
When starting to plan synchronous online sessions you will need to think about why you want to hold the session, who your participants are, and what you hope they will be able to do by the end of the session. This type of analysis is necessary to help you design a great session which will meet both your needs and the needs of your participants.
Purpose
First, think about the overall purpose of the session that you'd like to hold. Why would you like to do it? Some common purposes might be to:
- host a discussion or question and answer session
- interactively facilitate a topic
- plan or make decisions about something as a group
- hold office hours
- build or maintain online class community
- gather feedback from people
- host a guest speaker
- model or demonstrate a skill
Determine if your synchronous session will be part of a longer, asynchronous course or if it will be "stand alone", i.e. a session that doesn't relate to anything else and will be the only thing your participants attend on the topic. If it's part of a longer asynchronous course you will want to think about how your synchronous session will help you with the purpose and goals of your longer course event.
Here's an example from well known ed tech "guru" Tony Bates:
"In a fully online course, I also sometimes use Blackboard Collaborate to bring all the students together once or twice during a semester, to get a feeling of community at the start of a course, to establish my ‘presence’ as a real person with a face or voice at the start of a course, or to wrap up a course at the end, and I try to provide plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion by the students themselves. However, these synchronous ‘lectures’ are always optional as there will always be some students who cannot be present (although they can be made available in recorded format)".1
Thinking about your session's purpose is a necessary step to confirming whether it does make sense to hold your session synchronously online. For example, if what you want to do is make a presentation or hold a lecture where you talk at your participants for the entire time, ask yourself if that is the best use of your participants' time (or even if it is the best way for your participants to learn!) Presentations could be better transformed into videos that people watch before or after a synchronous online session, and those videos probably should be no more than a few minutes' long. (Why make everyone show up at the same place and time online if all you're going to do is talk at them?)
The main purpose we want to have when designing and facilitating synchronous online sessions is participation and interactivity most of all. Interactive sessions are not only the most engaging events to participate in, they also may be the most effective.
Participants
In the planning of your session you will also need to think about your participants. Ask yourself questions such as:
- Who will attend this session?
- Do they have any common characteristics? How might they be different from each other?
- What do I think their technical skills are? Do they have the computer hardware/software to be able to connect to the platforms and tools I'll be using?
- How many participants do I anticipate having in my session?
- When might they be able to participate in the session? (e.g. time zone, work schedules)
Keeping your participants' needs in mind is important in being able to plan for and design a session that works for all who will attend.
To think more about how your participants may be different from each other and planning your session accordingly, watch this short [4:36 min] video on Universal Design for Learning. (Note: Don't let the K-12 images put you off...these concepts are absolutely applicable to adult learners too.)
Outcomes
Lastly, when planning your session it is important to articulate the learning outcomes you hope your participants will be able to achieve by the end of the session. What do you want them to be able to know/do/value by the time your session is over? Can you use synchronous online learning to help your participants achieve them?
Again, use this step as a check and balance as to whether it does make sense to hold your session synchronously online. For example, if you hope your participants will be able to "Swim 50 metres in the competition pool" by the end of the session, I think you have your answer as to whether synchronous online learning will help your learners achieve that outcome! (Ok well that's a pretty obvious mismatch but you'd be surprised a how many times people either don't articulate learning outcomes at all for the sessions they are creating, or they pick modes of learning that are entirely unsuited to helping participants actually be able achieve the intended outcomes.)
Writing measurable learning outcomes is certainly the subject of an entire other course, but generally you could start with the stem, "By the end of the session, participants will be able to..." and then use appropriate verbs (perhaps using Bloom's taxonomy to guide you) to try to articulate what you'd like participants to be able to achieve. (Hint: Avoid the terms 'know' or 'understand' - they aren't very measurable!)
Examples:
- By the end of the session participants will be able to describe why learning from failure is an important part of innovation.
- By the end of the session participants will be able to name the essential three parts of an essay.
- By the end of the session participants will be able to summarize briefly three different change models and their key points.
Caveat: We're not saying the learning outcomes above are great examples of outcomes that would be appropriate for synchronous sessions per se, but they are examples of outcomes in general. It will be up to you to decide if what you're trying to help your participants achieve is something that they can achieve best via a synchronous online mode.
1A.W. (Tony) Bates, 2015. Teaching in Digital Age. Retrieved from: https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/11-10-step-eight-communicate-communicate-communicate/