Asynchronous Online Learning: The Movie Version

I remember reading that early movies were just filmed stage plays. Production companies would put motion picture cameras in a playhouse and film the play, so that watching the movie was like attending the theatre. Very basic. No special effects, no beautiful outdoor scenery, not a lot of live action. Probably no explosions. Imagine your favorite movie without those elements. For me, I picture Doc Brown’s DeLorean accelerating to 88 mph on a stage set: no scenery flying by, no car disappearing when it reaches 88 mph, no flaming tire tracks. It took time for people to realize the potential of movies, when they had time to create special effects, and to stage events that could never take place in a playhouse, such as explosions and car chases, and in effect, freeze time – at least from the audience’s perspective – to come up with creative visuals.

This is where we seem to be with online asynchronous learning, and online learning in general. Much the way film was just a replication of what went on in a playhouse, much of what I see in online learning is a replication of what goes on in a classroom. There are a lot of videos of instructors lecturing students, often while standing in front of a whiteboard, or writing on a tablet to simulate writing on a whiteboard. In synchronous online learning, students get put into breakout rooms for small group discussion, the way students in a class might be put into small groups around a table for small group discussion. The online student sees and hears what a student in a classroom would see and hear, but with only a fraction of the interactivity found in a classroom, and through the lens of a computer screen.

What if, instead of having the technology be an obstacle, an additional layer that gets between the instructor and the student, we take advantage of the technology to lay out a step-by-step approach to help students follow the thought process? We could use formatting such as color-coding and boldface so it is clear what changes with each step, include visuals to illustrate difficult concepts that might take hours to create but are prepared in advance, and create a story that is more intuitive for the student to follow. What if we shift the model from a copy of a classroom presentation to a presentation designed to be delivered online? Just like the movie industry did when it shifted from filming plays to producing movies.

For example, suppose you are teaching a lesson on the definite integral. In essence, what you are teaching students is that the area under a curve can be estimated by a series of really small rectangles (because finding the area of a rectangle is easy), and the smaller the rectangles, the more rectangles you can make and the more accurate your estimate. And if the rectangles got infinitely small, you would know the exact area under the curve. 

Many lectures on this topic involve the instructor drawing a set of rectangles under the graph of a curve, then, sub-dividing those rectangles a number of times, and each time the drawing gets more difficult to read as lines are erased, or written over by other lines. And at some point, the instructor says, “and if are rectangles get small enough, we’ll know the exact area.”

Now picture an animation: a curve with a small number of rectangles under it. And as the instructor explains the concept, those rectangles sub-divide into smaller, equal-sized rectangles – a feat which is difficult to draw free-hand on a whiteboard. And maybe next to the illustration you have a summation that keeps count of the rectangles and calculates their area. And as the rectangles continue to sub-divide, the summation keeps pace. And maybe at some point right-hand endpoints are introduced to the left-hand endpoints so that, using color and shading, the student sees two sets of rectangles estimating the area under the curve. And as the animation plays out, the width of the rectangles approach zero, thus creating the Riemann sums that help define the definite integral. In short, instead of trying to draw a legible set of rectangles, while trying to sum the areas of those rectangles, you narrate the story just as the Greeks who took the first steps down the road to calculus would have narrated as they tried to estimate the area of a shape formed by non-linear boundaries – like a circle. But the technology illustrates the story while the instructor narrates it.

This paradigm shift affords many opportunities to improve the learning process. For example, no matter how many times I have taught a lesson, I invariably come to a point in the lesson as I am teaching where I say to myself, “Oh yea, this is where students struggle. I should have done [fill in the blank].” With our new model, we can review our lesson in advance, see those points, and add what we should have added to anticipate students’ difficulties. This helps us minimize the cognitive dissonance that small miscues and errors create and helps prevent them from snowballing into a misunderstanding of the concept. Remember: unlike a classroom, students can’t ask questions on the spot because the learning is asynchronous so you don’t have a chance to correct those misconceptions as they arise. There may be a QA or a discussion thread somewhere in the course but it is always after the fact and not as effective.

In Back to the Future, Marty wishes he had time to warn Doc Brown of the fate that awaits him the night he first tests his time machine. But then Marty realizes that he has all the time in the world: he is in a time machine and he can simply set the controls to arrive back in 1985 a few minutes early so he can warn the Doc. We too, can use time to create lessons in advance that take advantage of the medium we are using to illustrate difficult concepts for students. Our online lessons don’t have to be pale imitations of what takes place in a classroom, the same way movies don’t have to be pale imitations of what it is like to attend the theatre. We can create unique learning experiences that illustrate difficult concepts, approach content from a new perspective, or multiple perspectives, and make courses that are completely different than what takes place in a live classroom. We just need to be willing to think a little bit differently. And teach differently.