Using the online class well: Making the most of the synchronous time with your class

When I started teaching online, I figured out pretty quickly that I couldn't simply squeeze four hours of teaching and learning into the hour I had with my class. The first few years of online teaching felt like being a beginning teacher again. I had to fundamentally rethink how I organised things as those 60 minutes were such a precious commodity.

For my class, I am interested in developing a Knowledge Building Community. Well. That's the goal. This means that discussion and collaboration are central and everything we do hangs off of these principles.

Often my students are the only Art Historians at their school, sometimes they are the only online learners. They work in isolation during the week, so it is ultra important that collaborative opportunities are maximised during our synchronous time together; whether we are collaborating in a slide, in a breakout room or discussion in Knowledge Forum. Everyone has a responsibility to add to our collective knowledge and they know that they have a part to play. Our work as a collective is highly visible to everyone in that learning community.

And when I talk to my students about what they value in their learning, it is that discussion and connection to the class that is important to them.

When I think about learning design that will help to support this, the SAMR model (Dr Ruben Puentedura) comes to mind. As the image above shows, the emphasis is on the affordances that technology allows. So how can you leverage the Zoom call or even the tools you use with the class to connect in ways that previously wouldn't have been possible?