Teachers Resource Force Blog

What is asynchronous learning and 3 ways to use it with virtual and hybrid learning

5/7/2021

What is asynchronous learning?

The meaning of asynchronous learning is when you post your teaching material online for your virtual or hybrid students to self-study, which allows them to learn on their own schedule and at their own pace.

What are the benefits of asynchronous learning?

The benefits of asynchronous learning are:

Flexible for students
More convenient
Students can access teaching material at any time
Students can complete their homework or classwork at any time
Students can rewatch teaching material to consume it at their own pace to improve comprehension and retention
No real-time interaction is required, which allows for teachers to support students at their own pace
Can work for both distance learning and with hybrid teaching models
Allows an option for various learning styles to be included for students to access the ones they benefit from the most
Less social obstacles including distractions and comparisons from peers
Fully interactive regardless of location
Able to replicate similar experiences to in-person teaching
Students will never miss a class, and they can always catch up on missed work
Personalize and optimize the learning experience
Take advantage of extra time to process, practice, and respond
Adapt learning to self-accommodate for a disability

what is asynchronous learning and what are the benefits

Examples of asynchronous learning activities:

Some effective examples of asynchronous learning activities are:

Watching filmed demonstrations
Presentations with writing prompts
Presentations with discussion prompts
Presentations with questions to answer
Research projects
Individual or group presentations
Online class or group discussions
Individual or group projects
Learning activities such as quizzes, lessons and games such as web-decks and Pick a Path escape rooms

How to have an asynchronous morning meeting:

If you are teaching remotely or hybrid and are looking for an asynchronous way to deliver your morning meeting messages to your class, then dailymorningmeetings.com is an ideal solution. Every single day, a new morning message will appear for your morning meeting. There is no prep work involved, and you can share your screen with your students and ask them to either discuss the prompt of the day, or write it in their morning meeting journals. There are 6 different themes to choose from each day if you want to mix it up with your students, but the Daily Motivation is always free if you want to start your day with an inspirational quote and prompt! Check out DailyMorningMeetings.com here.

dailymorningmeetings.com ready made morning meetings to start the day. what is asynchronous learning and what are the benefits

2 enjoyable asynchronous activities for students to complete at their own pace:

If you are looking for two unique and fun asynchronous activities to do with your students during distance, hybrid or in-person learning then check out these 2 resources:

Pick a Path Virtual Escape Rooms:
These are unique virtual escape rooms that have more than one way out! There are multiple paths for students to choose from which gives them ownership of their experience in the game. At each level, there are educational problem-solving games for students to complete before progressing to the next level. As it is asynchronous, students can take their time as they progress through each level. There are differentiated reading options too to suit reading ages from grade 3 to grade 11, so students can take ownership of their level of challenge. Once they make it out and receive their certificate, they can play the game again to read other variations of the story and explore other escape routes!
Students find it really enjoyable, and without realising it, they are practising their reading and comprehension skills in reading the narrative of the story, as well as their skills in literacy, numeracy and problem solving, to progress to each level! Currently, there are two stories available: escape the desert island and lost in space! Keep an eye out for more games coming soon!

You can check out the Pick a Path virtual escape room games either from TeachersPayTeachers or shop.TRF.one, below:

Desert Island: TpT or TRF
Lost in Space: TpT or TRF

Web-decks.com:
Web decks are web-based, interactive, self-assessing resources, which work exceptionally well for asynchronous learning. Students work their way through the interactive word searches, true or false decks or interactive lessons at their own pace, and receive immediate feedback on their responses whereby no grading is required by you as the teacher! Students can take a screenshot of the final summary slide as evidence of completion and comprehension of the task at hand.

To conclude:

As the landscape of education evolves into a hybrid model, asynchronous learning will continue to become more prevalent even after lockdowns cease. I think it is safe to assume that “snow days” will become a thing of the past as schools have modified distance learning approaches and studying from home. It also means that student attendance can increase, as students can come back to any learning they may have missed due to illness for example, in their own time and place. This is not to say that synchronous face to face learning is in the past, far from it, but I believe asynchronous learning will certainly continue to play a role in hybrid models as this evolves into the future of education.

Get a free week's access:

If you are interested in trying out these resources for free, you can check out the links below for more information:

Get a free week of access to web-decks.com
Get a free week of access to dailymorningmeetings.com

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5 creative ideas for distance learning early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning and hybrid learning

7/6/2021

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What do you do when your students have finished their distance learning tasks? Remote learning can be challenging as you try to ensure all your students are learning, progressing and occupied. It can be difficult to find suitable and fun virtual learning activities to issue as extension work for your early finishers. In this article, you will find 5 ideas for your early finishers during distance, hybrid or blended learning classroom; you can also watch the video below!

Distance learning is challenging enough without adding extra unnecessary pressure and stress to students. If your students are completing their work well, then great, why not let them have some free time to unwind! However, if you find your hybrid or blended learning students are keen to have more structure and direction in their virtual learning, then check out some of the following sites below:

ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

Here are 5 options you can give early finisher students during distance learning:

1. Web-Decks.com - digital colouring pages on any screen
Teachers have always loved to issue colouring activities during downtime or as extension work for early finishers, as it is a calming and creative task for students. But what about your early finishers during distance learning? Fortunately you can assign digital colouring pages for your students too at
web-decks.com! The web-deck colouring pages are the exact same experience as colouring physically, and they work on any device with a finger or pen. So if you want to offer your hybrid early finishers colouring options without the worries of printing and needing resources, then this option is for you.
You can also get 1 week free with a monthly or annual membership to web-decks.com!

web-decks.com online coloring pages. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

2. VirtualVacation.us - travel the world from your couch
This free site is wonderful for extension work for your virtual early finishers! It allows your remote students to take a virtual tour of various cities around the world. This is especially wonderful right now as travel is limited, and this enables all students to widen their horizons and experience cities around the globe. There are walking tours, driving tours, airplane tours and even a city guesser game! Your early finishers will enjoy taking a virtual vacation once they have finished all their distance learning tasks.

virtualvacations.us virtual vacations. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

3. Radio.Garden - listen to any radio station around the world
Ever wanted to listen to any radio station around the world? Well now you can! This is such an incredible free tool - you can spin around the globe and listen to the radio stations from any country. What a wonderful way to use extension work for your distance learning students to widen their horizons. They can find the most remote places on earth and listen to the radio there, or countries they have visited or wish to visit. A fun activity would be to ask your remote learning students to compare the differences in the type of music or advertisements that they hear on radio stations!

radio.garden listen to radio around the world. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

4. FreeRice.com - answer questions and help donate rice
This free site is an educational trivia game with a humanitarian twist! Every time students get a correct answer to a question, they are helping to donate rice for people in need around the world. “100% of all funds generated on FreeRice go to the World Food Programme. They are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, delivering life-saving food assistance in emergencies and working with vulnerable communities to improve nutrition and build resilience.” So by encouraging your distance learning early finishers to play educational games on FreeRice, they can feel empowered knowing that they are helping feed hungry people. What a wonderful way to give back while learning!

freerice.com educational games that help those in need. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

5. DuoLingo.com - a gamified way to learn a language
This is a fantastic free tool to use as early finishers work for your virtual learning students, to help them learn a new language! It gamifies learning a new language and encourages students to maintain their streak by practising every day. If they decide to make a profile, they can earn “lingos” which they can spend in store, and keep a record of their progress in all the languages they want to learn. They can even send invites to friends and have a group leaderboard. This site does a great job at gamifying learning a language!

duolingo.com learn a language online. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

To conclude:

Distance learning and blended learning can certainly be a challenge. You may be struggling managing a group of students who are working at very different paces: some might be barely completing any assignments while others race ahead and finish work early. It is helpful to have an arsenal of fun and engaging websites to keep on hand as extension tasks for you to assign your virtual learning early finisher students. I hope you find these sites helpful!

Try digital colouring pages for free:

If you want to try out digital colouring pages to see how they work, as they are quite a new thing, then if you sign up with web-decks.com today, you can get one week for free!

There are different options for you depending on how many students you have, but your virtual, hybrid and face to face students can choose whichever colouring pages they like, or you can assign ones you would like them to use. Oh, and there are way more than just digital colouring page decks for your students on that site too, check web-decks out here!

digital colouring pages online. ideas for early finishers during virtual learning, remote learning, blended learning

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Building resilience in your students during hybrid and distance learning in 2021

17/5/2021

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Resilience is more important than ever during this turbulent year as we continue to fight our way through a pandemic. The landscape of education has turned on its head, and you may be noticing that your students are struggling with motivation self-esteem, and other aspects that can affect their resilience. It's important that your students are given the opportunity to reflect on their own resilience and how they might be able to improve it during these challenging times. Keep reading for some ideas on how to improve your students resilience during hybrid, distance or face-to-face learning.

Building resilience in your students during hybrid/distance learning | Teachers Resource Force

Why is teaching resilience so important during this pandemic:

Education has had to take a drastic transformation since the pandemic. Whether you are still in distance learning, moved to face to face learning or a combination of the two with hybrid learning, the educational experience has undoubtedly changed for everyone. School is somewhere for students to have that consistency and routine, and since everything changed last year, this has thrown their lives up in the air. Now, more than ever, students need to be taught how to develop their resilience to deal with changes such as this.

Sadly it is challenging to teach content let alone crucial life skills like resilience, so an effective way of incorporating character education and SEL, is through self-directed self-assessing online lessons. These types of ready to go lessons make teaching these topic much more manageable. They don’t even require teacher input from you, yet will teach your students all about resilience and help them determine the best strategies for how to manage their stress in an effective way.

Ready to go online lesson for teaching resilience:

If you would like a ready to go resource to give to your students, this resilience lesson is completely remote and hosted online. Students go through each slide at their own pace, reading the content learning new information and then they get an opportunity to answer questions on the topic to check their understanding. They will work through realistic scenarios that young people often face and reflect on the possible ways they can choose to react.

There is a range of different question styles to keep the lesson interesting and it also provides immediate feedback to all students; the correct answer is confirmed automatically, which means no more grading for you!

This activity can be set as classwork, home work or remotely for distance learning. It’s fully interactive and so easy to use; there are absolutely no resources required – you don’t even need to grade it as it is self-assessing. Students are able to learn by repetition as they can redo the activity as many times as they need to increase their score.

Resilience online lesson for distance learning | Teachers Resource Force

DOWNLOAD RESILIENCE FROM TPT

DOWNLOAD RESILIENCE FROM TRF

To conclude:

Resilience has always been an important skill to teach students, and in this current climate it is more important than ever as students are experiencing a whole other level of stress. Giving students an opportunity to work at their own pace to learn about resilience in an interactive way and test their responses over and over again, will give students the opportunity to embrace different strategies for developing resilience. Not to mention, the fact that no teacher input or assessment required, makes for a much less stressful teaching experience as well - win, win!

A freebie for you:

If you are looking for another effective way of building resilience, you can use these resilience colouring affirmations. These cards help you encourage your students to think of examples of resilience to help foster self-belief. You can download them for free below: