Strategies to Maximize Asynchronous Learning

This chapter provides suggestions on how educators and learners can thrive in asynchronous learning environments. A review of what constitutes an asynchronous environment and how it contrasts to synchronous learning environments is discussed. Constructivist, social constructivist, constructivist learning environments, and active learning strategies are reviewed in the context of asynchronous learning. In addition, key tools, applications, and strategies that can be used to support successful asynchronous learning environments are reviewed. This includes the inherent tools within a learning management system, video, and collaboration tools. Finally, educator best practices and recommended areas of future research are discussed. Within the best practices section, strategies to create a more effective and empathic learning environment are discussed.

Preschool and early primary school age children learning of computational thinking through the use of asynchronous learning environments in the age of Covid-19

This current study aims to examine through a literature review whether children of preschool and early primary school age can be taught distance computational thinking (CT) through asynchronous learning environments in the age of covid. Over the past few years in Greece, a sharp rise in computational thinking has been noted as both students and teachers feel the need to create more imaginative and interactive ways. The study results illustrate the significance of digital media in the educational process and the educator’s crucial role in using such digital tools in preschool and early primary school age. The cooperation between educators of preschool age and teachers of Information Technology could offer new dimensions and provide numerous benefits to the learning process. Distance learning programs could help teachers’ training process through properly structured material that corresponds more effectively to the learning of CT.

Distance Teacher Training in Periods of Emergency (Covid-19 Pandemic)

The closing of schools at the beginning of spring 2020 in Greece highlighted the need for school distance education to make up for lost teaching time and to maintain learners’ contact with the educational process and other members of the school community. However, the teachers needed support in this urgent situation since they did not have previous experience in school distance education. The Laboratory for Advanced Teaching Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Distance Education (E-Learning Lab) of the University of Crete, attempted to contribute with its own means to the support of these teachers. Within this framework, fast-pace, distance seminars were designed and implemented to support teachers on pedagogical issues of distance education. A total of 20 distance training seminars were conducted from 19March to 29April2020 in which more than 40000 teachers of primary and secondary education in Greece participated. The overall presentation and assessment of the training actions showed not only the enormous interest of the teaching community but also the need for such training actions with particular emphasis on the principles and the methodology of school distance education, synchronous and asynchronous learning environments, and the designing or planning of teaching scenarios based on the pedagogical approaches compatible with distance learning.

Utilizing Digital Educational Games to Enhance Adult Learning

As adult educators, we strive to facilitate learning using a variety of teaching strategies that engage learners. Learning by doing is a powerful method that combines both application and practice to address the needs and motivations of adult learners. Digital educational games provide one type of an engaging instructional strategy for adult learners that can be delivered in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. Digital educational games are not something new, however, as they were developed soon after the first computer games (Wolfe & Crookall, 1998). Additionally, game-based educating has been used in many adult learning contexts, including the corporate environment to train staff in financial and economic skills, and in the military system for combat and strategy training (Whitton & Hollins, 2008). Despite these successful applications, there is a lack of recognition of digital educational games as a significant instructional method for the adult learner (Connolly, Boyle, MacArthur, Hainey, & Boyle, 2012; Gros, 2007). In this chapter, we review the research literature on adult learning via games in terms of learner motivation and engagement, specifically focusing on adult learning in the online environment. We will define key terms and essential characteristics of educational games, share best practices for developing and designing engaging educational games as an instructional strategy, and discuss the types of learning outcomes that can be achieved through the use of effective educational games, concentrating on adult learners in the online environment.

Exploring Online Learning Through Synchronous and Asynchronous Instructional Methods

Teaching and learning in the online environment are challenging. Students and instructors must employ technological tools and strategies to be successful. Merely having a computer and software does not equate to being technologically literate in the 21st century world of work. Learning how to incorporate virtual reality games, webcams, video conferencing, and brainstorming platforms such as Padlet, Bubbl.us, Zoom, Twitter, Instagram, interactive whiteboards, chat rooms, YouTube, and screencasting videos is encouraged. Polleverywhere, Socrative, and Flubaroo are a few assessments to investigate interest by examining the world of synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. The digital natives of today's classrooms are the future employees of tomorrow's real-life world of work; therefore, organizations must take control of the situation and prepare workers to meet future job demands. The question of how to do so effectively will be answered in this chapter.

Instructor Attitudes within the SCALE Efficiency Projects

This paper presents the results of interviews with the principal investigators of the current Sloan Center for Asynchronous Learning Environments (SCALE) Efficiency Projects. There are six such projects: Spanish, Microbiology, Economics, Math, Chemistry, and Physics. The paper reviews each project individually, summarizes the results, and then discusses some common lessons learned as well as some still open issues. The paper considers satisfaction both from the perspective of the course director/designer and from the perspective of other instructors and graduate teaching assistants. Theevidence appears to show that all of these groups are satisfied with ALN, relative to the prior situation. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether these results would translate to other high enrollment courses.

Knowledge Framework for Online Learning

While online education continues to grow, virtual instructors face certain asynchronous uncertainties when it comes to knowledge exchange with students. These challenges are especially prevalent in the cybersecurity and programming domains. To counteract such uncertainties and minimize teaching deficiencies expected to occur in asynchronous learning environments, this chapter assesses knowledge factors that impact virtual knowledge transfer and absorption processes. Synchronicity framework is proposed to integrate knowledge-seeking behavior, knowledge properties, knowledge domains, knowledge types, knowledge tools, and technology synchronicity. A real-life case is provided to integrate the framework in practice.

Students' perceptions about online teaching effectiveness: A bottom-up approach for identifying online instructors’ roles

The topic of online instructors’ roles has been of interest to the educational community since the late twentieth century. In previous studies, the identification of online instructors’ roles was done using a top-down (deductive) approach. This study applied a bottom-up (inductive) procedure to examine not only the roles of online instructors from a student perspective, but also how well these roles are implemented in practice. In the first stage, roles were defined using factor analysis on a sample of 925 students. A questionnaire was created after an extensive literature review and in-depth interviews with experts. The methodology detected six roles: pedagogical, course designer, social, life skills promoter, technical, and managerial. In the second stage, students’ scores were projected over those factors to obtain the instructors’ performance in each role (the significance of the results was assessed using non-parametric tests). Main findings included: (i) the emergence of a new role, the life skills promoter; (ii) online scenarios becoming more transparent and intuitive due to syllabus design; (iii) the consideration of more audio-visual resources by instructors in asynchronous learning environments; and (iv) the value of offering guidelines to students for collaborative activities to reduce the level of frustration with these activities.