The Right Interactions for Your Online Course

Patti Shank

How do we select the best elements to include in our online courses? Researchers describe the difficulty of selecting elements because there are so many! The abundance of choices leads to confusion in deciding what to use for what purpose. Too many organizations, therefore, pick a single tool (such as the virtual classroom) and then shoehorn all instruction into that tool. But shoehorning doesn’t usually work out that well.

Research shows that asynchronous (on demand) and synchronous (live) elements support different instructional needs. To get the best outcomes, we should combine asynchronous and synchronous elements. Some people call this blended learning. We call it using what works.
In this workshop, we’ll explore what research says are best uses for asynchronous and synchronous elements. We’ll analyze how asynchronous and synchronous elements can support various learning needs and discuss the tools that can meet them.