Tips for successful asynchronous teaching: supporting students, part two

Effective, up-to-date communication with remote online students can quickly become burdensome, even for the most motivated of educators. With endless modes of staying in touch – from WhatsApp to good old email – and concerns such as AI’s threat to academic integrity, connecting with learners in a digital world requires vigilance and careful consideration.

In the second part of this series on successful asynchronous teaching, here are tips for managing communication and assessment:

• To read part one with more tips for successful asynchronous teaching, click here
• Spotlight guide: The evolution of authentic assessment
• Resource collection: Higher education goes hybrid

1. Changing your preferences for email communication may be necessary

One inconvenience that an asynchronous instructor must accept as part of the gig is getting a lot of emails from students. And you have to learn to love it. Other than online discussion boards and setting up personal Zoom calls, email is really the only way students can engage with the professor. 

If the asynchronous teacher does not want to be perceived as glorified AI, then they must be super-responsive and very timely with their emails. One strategy I have for this is to create folders in my mailbox where I can categorise emails from students. I also let students know that their emails are a top priority for me, but I do need 24 hours to respond meaningfully and helpfully, so I ask them to please send queries in a strategic way that anticipates my response time.

2. I (strongly) encourage students to meet with me

I can’t require synchronous or in-person meetings, but I can encourage students to meet with me – through Zoom or in person in two ways. First, I frequently and actively encourage groups of students or individuals to meet with me. I also emphasise that meeting with me earlier in the week will serve them better. Sometimes I offer extra credit for meeting with me. Second, I make the assignments and puzzles just challenging enough that students realise meeting with me will help them speed up their work. Of course, the work is doable on their own, too, but they quickly work out that they learn more when they meet with me. And it only takes one meeting to get the students hooked. 

Of course, this is a huge time sink for me, but it is very effective. I get to know my students by name, and they see that I am real and accessible. I have more luck with online meetings than getting students to show up for office hours in person – and there is no rule that says asynchronous teaching can’t include in-person office hours as well as virtual ones. 

3. Competitive written discourse deeply engages students

In some of my asynchronous courses, students participate in formal debates. The in-person, think-on-your-feet style of traditional debate is lost, unfortunately; but it is replaced with more thoughtful and well-cited competitive written discourse. So, when the debate is asynchronous, students must write more than they would in person. Yet, despite more writing, many students report that the debates are the best part of the course. Plus, the activity helps them connect with other students as much as in-person debates and research projects.

In a nutshell, this is how the debates work asynchronously: 

1. I divide students into two teams.
2. I set up discussion boards online for each team so students can easily communicate. 
3. I assign a debate topic and determine which team will be pro and which con. It is pedagogically important to not give students a choice about which team they will be on. This develops research skills for a stance the student may not personally believe in, which in turn fosters intellectual growth. And students tell me it makes the debate more fun. 
4. The debate is divided into five assignments, one per week. 
   • Each student submits their own research findings for their assigned stance for assignment 1. 
   • For assignment 2, each student submits their opening arguments. 
   • Assignment 3 requires teamwork, where each side submits one document as their main arguments, but each student on the team also has to submit a personal reflection about their contributions to the assignment. 
   • I post the two “main arguments” documents online, one from each team.
   • Assignment 4 requires teams to submit rebuttals of the other team’s main arguments, with the same structure as assignment 3. 
   • For the last assignment each student submits closing arguments after I post the rebuttals online.

A similar structure of asynchronous engagement can be set up for term projects or research papers, where students work in groups, collaborate to find or produce data, and work individually for assessing their contributions to the project. Although the students may never meet in person, this type of engagement allows students from different geographic locations and backgrounds to work together – building a community that is impossible to achieve so broadly in traditional format.

4. Tips to protect academic integrity and promote student success

Keeping assessments of learning fair in asynchronous format may seem daunting. Students can find answers online, use AI without permission, work together, or use the textbook or course material, even if instructed not to. There are ways around this, however. 

My preferred method is to simply make the exams more difficult by asking questions in such a way that the answers are not readily available online or in any textbook. I ask questions that require students to use what they learned to produce a unique answer to a problem that cannot be regurgitated from elsewhere. This requires work and ingenuity on the part of the instructor, but it can be achieved both through open-ended problems and through multiple-choice or true/false format. Also, just as one can randomise the questions and the choices for each question in online exams, exams themselves can be randomised. I create multiple versions of the same exam with different questions of similar difficulty, and assign exams to students randomly. 

What can asynchronous teaching offer that in-person learning can’t?

In asynchronous courses, students generally write more than in traditional format in order to remain engaged in the course (as in debates or research projects). This offers the instructor more opportunities to observe and help improve student writing and critical-thinking skills.

Asynchronous forms of learning assessment allow a more cognitively and culturally diverse body of students to succeed. For example, neurodivergent students are often required to produce formal notice of their accommodation requests. These requests are often for more time and a quiet space to work. Online exams that provide ample time for all students allow those with both diagnosed and undiagnosed neurodivergent traits a fair and equitable opportunity to succeed without having to make personal disclosures and formal requests.

For me, the most important upside to asynchronous teaching is the broadly inclusive and diverse student audience it attracts. Students from anywhere, any cultural background, any physical and cognitive ability, or any interest level can benefit from the course. This allows for a rich diversity of opinion and discourse style for students on projects and debates. As a result, everyone learns more and discovers their hidden talents and maybe newfound interests – including me. 

Figen Mekik is guest faculty for climate science and professor of geology in the department of physics at Grand Valley State University, Michigan.

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