At the end of last semester, with permission from my campus’ PHRRC, I surveyed my Fall 2020 class on the top three features of the class that were helpful for them to learn the material. The choices and the technique … Continue reading Surveying students on asynchronous and synchronous adaptations

One of the most significant decisions I faced at the beginning of this remote only semester was the delivery method, as in, whether to deliver lectures “live” at a set time using Zoom (synchronous) or to deliver lectures via video with no set class time (asynchronous). The diagram below summarizes my weighing of the pros and cons: As I thought about what makes teaching exciting to me, interacting with students is one of the top reasons. It would appear that the synchronous model would then be the obvious choice. But it was not as clear cut in my context. My … Continue reading Synchronous vs. Asynchronous, or, How I made Asynchronous work

While COVID-19 and the subsequent remote class delivery brought its share of disruption, it also allowed me to try something new. One of the methods I tried was to “chunk” my lecture. I think the following schematic should explain it: I had read about “chunking” or breaking up the lecture for a while. From what I understand, its primary benefit is to reduce the students’ cognitive load in any given class. By breaking up a lecture, more active learning strategies can also be implemented. Finally, it helps to reset students‘ attention. My typical Human Anatomy lecture is 75 minutes long. … Continue reading “Chunking” the lecture