With the emergence of online education arising because of the pandemic, distributed learning is more important than ever. Although all of my classes this semester are synchronous (all the participants are completing the activities at the same time) a lot of my friends are completing their lectures asynchronously (participants participate at different times in different locations). I have done both styles of learning, so I know there are pros and cons to each type; such as in asynchronous classes, the students can plan their class schedule around their work schedule instead of the opposite.
It is interesting to see how many different ways there are to meet now. It is almost impossible to avoid someone since there are so many different ways people can communicate. An example that comes to mind for me is that next year when classes are in-person, it will be harder to have snow days where school is cancelled since everyone will be able to log onto a zoom call and access the lecture from their homes.
Although I have mostly used zoom and MS Teams to schedule meetings this year, it is interesting to see all the options that are out there. Such as the Gathered Town, where you can get together with 20 friends and walk into someone to start a face-to-face conversation with them, just like in ‘real-life’.
Finally, we talked a bit about Pedagogy vs. Modality. Many people say that online classes are less engaging since they are online, however, that is untrue. It depends entirely on the pedagogy the teacher uses. For example, last year I fell asleep during a history class which was in-person; however, I was completely engaged within a different history class last semester. Depending on how the teacher teaches influences whether the class will be engaging.
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