Maintaining rich dialogic interactions in the transition to synchronous online learning

Abstract

Purpose The authors present the first author’s recent experience as a design case, capturing approach and principles to transitioning a course from in-person to remote modality while maintaining its collaborative, synchronous and dialogic nature. Design/methodology/approach A mathematical content course for preservice teachers at a mid-Western university was used as a site for this case study. Data include video recordings of synchronous online sessions, students’ written work and their reflections. Using a design case approach, the authors identified new social norms, which were interactively established from the mutual constitution of expectations and commitments between the instructor and students and which gradually became important aspects of the culture of online, whole-class discussions. Findings Dialogic discussions revealed a variety of student-generated methods to solve problems that enabled student-led interactions to become the center of each session. Opportunities for students to reflect on their own ideas and reasoning about mathematics often occurred in the synchronous settings in which they were allowed to express provisional ideas and clarify their thinking to others. Making connections between relevant educational theories and pragmatic instructional decisions of course instructors and designers in the crisis, this study aims to identify principles of instructional design and implementation that became salient in this case, backing them up with evidence from student voices. Originality/value The authors discuss how these principles of instructional design and implementation could make synchronous online instruction manageable for more instructors in future where entire semesters may occur through a virtual medium.

Synchronous video-based communication and online learning: an exploration of instructors’ perceptions and experiences

“…In our study, it became evident that participants were attempting to optimize the affordances of the communication medium in other ways such as hosting discussions, whiteboarding, and screen sharing with students. This finding aligns with previous research which has shown that discussion-based synchronous sessions have been beneficial to building classroom community in online courses (Brown & Eaton, 2020;Jung & Brady, 2020).…”

Student and teacher experiences of online synchronous learning

“…The papers coded under this theme include those concerned with the use of technology to promote delivery and communication in the online classroom. This was frequently commented on in papers, with some reporting that technology was key to establishing social norms in online classroom settings (Jung and Brady, 2020). However, the time span of this review, limits some of the usefulness of these findings as newer technological advances such as Whatsapp were not featured.…”

Pengembangan Sistem Pembelajaran Flipped Classroom Berbasis Inkuiri Terbimbing pada Materi Hidrolisis Garam

“…Selain itu, peserta didik akan mengalami peningkatan kemampuan dalam menganalisis materi pembelajarannya (Wahyuni et al, 2019). Selanjutnya, pembelajaran tatap muka atau synchronous dapat dilakukan secara tatap maya atau dikenal juga dengan synchronous online (Jung & Brady, 2020). Hal ini sesuai dengan aturan yang dikeluarkan oleh pemerintah bahwa pembelajaran tatap muka diganti dengan pembelajaran secara daring.…”