Preparing for Synchronous Sessions

When planning your session it is important to articulate the learning outcomes that 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!

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.