{"id":2814,"date":"2024-01-26T11:48:44","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/itl\/?p=2814"},"modified":"2024-05-20T13:04:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T12:04:51","slug":"come-watch-with-me-blending-the-synchronous-with-the-asynchronous-to-enhance-learning-and-sense-of-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/itl\/2024\/01\/26\/come-watch-with-me-blending-the-synchronous-with-the-asynchronous-to-enhance-learning-and-sense-of-belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"Come watch with me: Blending the synchronous with the asynchronous to enhance learning and sense of belonging."},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"Dr Jen McBride is a Senior Lecturer (teaching and
scholarship) in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology in
the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (FBMH).
Jen\u2019s academic background is in cognition \u2013 specifically in
attention, mem\u00a0ory, and behavioural control \u2013 and she has
a long-standing interest in using our understanding of
cognition to enhance our teaching. Jen is also particularly
interested in the social landscape in HE teaching, and how
this contributes to teaching, learning, and sense of
belonging in our students. Jen is now (since September
2022) the FBMH Associate-Dean for Teaching Excellence
and Student Outcomes, and is a Senior Fellow of the
Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)<\/p>\n

When learning rapidly moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic, conversations with students made it clear that they really felt they were really missing the sense of community and the \u201cUniversity Experience\u201d they had been expecting. Indeed there is general agreement that a sense of community is critical to students\u2019 academic motivation and success, as well as their well-being (Osterman 2000; Cook-Sather, 2017; Bowskill et al., 2022; see also a recent report from Pearson\/Wonkhe on building belonging). But this presents a key challenge in the move towards more online and blended learning in higher education: To create a flexible and inclusive learning experience that also encourages student engagement and student community and sense of belonging in a largely digital environment. One way to achieve this might be to enhance students\u2019 sense of community and belonging to their cohort within the teaching sessions. Myself and others (e.g. Kuepper-Tetzel & Nordmann, 2021) delivered teaching via a watch-party format during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

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The central idea came from Watch Parties used by popular online streaming services: Promoting a shared experience in a digital environment fosters feelings of togetherness\/community. Learners are physically separate, but come together at the same time online to view the same pre-prepared materials, and discuss them with one another and the lecturer in a live chatbox. When I tried this using Zoom during the pandemic it didn\u2019t take long for the discussion to begin. Some students asked simple clarification questions \u2013 e.g. \u201cwhat was CZ?\u201d \u2013 so the chatbox meant students could have their misconception immediately corrected rather than this present an obstacle for the remainder of the session. Other students discussed really in-depth, critical-thinking, points related content that was not being covered in that particular class.<\/p>\n

Students were extremely enthusiastic about watch-parties for teaching; formal and informal student-feedback was universally positive, and attendance remained high throughout the semester even though all materials were recorded and made available asynchronously.<\/p>\n

The Chatbox is key \u2013 incorporating this in the move back to campus<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the success of my watch-party trial my natural inclination was to run controlled experiments to tease out what the causal factors were for the success of this approach (more details on this coming soon!). So far, all my data point to the chatbox as being the crucial element<\/em><\/strong>, and in controlled experiments that keep other factors (e.g. topic, lecturer) constant, a chatbox reliably improves both students\u2019 learning and sense of community in both online and in-person formats<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Online Watch Parties for Teaching during the Pandemic<\/strong><\/p>\n

So clearly I want to keep the chatbox in my own teaching everywhere I can. The programmes I teach have large cohorts of students, and so in the return to more on-campus teaching post-pandemic we run these sessions in large lecture theatres with multiple screens \u2013 the lecture content is projected on one screen, with a Padlet chatbox accessed via a QR code on a mobile device projected onto another screen. This has worked well both with pre-recorded content (students come together in a lecture theatre to take part in the session) and live delivery (where we have two members of staff \u2013 one to deliver the live \u201clecture\u201d material and the other to monitor the chatbox). \u00a0Next year, I hope to be able to offer students a choice between attending the same session either online or in-person as best suits their own circumstances, especially as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite.<\/p>\n

Tips and Tricks <\/strong><\/p>\n