Online education: discussion

[Amy]

This year, education has been a little different. Whether you’ve been wearing masks in class or teaching online, it’s clear that remote learning has changed education in a big way. We know there are a lot of educators and students in our Community and we would love to hear your thoughts.

You might have seen us talking about some tools that will hopefully make your life easier as a teacher, and we mentioned the Rev extension. This extension creates 99% accurate Rev transcripts, captions, and subtitles directly from files within your Dropbox account. On top of taking the legwork out of transcription, they have also created a playbook for transitioning to online learning that you can check out here. We’ve pulled out a few facts we found interesting, so have a read and join the discussion

Online courses make learning accessible and flexible to a greater number of potential learners. These include students with disabilities, geographical restrictions, or prohibitive work schedules. Plus, as more people expect colleges and universities to provide online options, virtual classes allow institutions to stay competitive, and we are big fans of online learning. Whether it’s accessing course documents, participating in online video classes or staying on track with coursework, there are Dropbox tips to help teachers and students to use Paper, or apps and integrations that can save you time like Zoom, Gmail, and more.

One of the topics we really enjoyed learning about in that playbook was the split between synchronous and asynchronous work, as that’s something we do ourselves at Dropbox. 

Much like our day to day work, engaging students with simultaneous live instruction and on-demand material is key to getting the best results. But determining which activities should take place when needs careful and considered planning.

While some activities can be effective synchronously or asynchronously, others are best suited for one specific method. In their research, Digital Promise and Tyton Partners found that instructors were using synchronous and asynchronous learning for the activities in the image above. 

What do you think about this balance of activities? How do you balance your teaching?