The following is edited from various Friday Mailing posts in January & February 2023 on the different types of online learning

Standalone online courses

The first example is standalone online courses. Users can access them at a time suitable for them and they involve no communication with other users. They may involve quizzes that are automatically marked. Simple ones can be reading text, but more complex ones might involve videos. Good examples of these are the Basic and Foundation courses found on safeguardingtraining.cofeportal.org. The huge advantage of this type of course is that, once created, large numbers of people can go through them without any tutor involvement. However, it should be clear to anyone involved in adult learning that they have limitations. The lack of engagement with other learners and with any tutor is a big limiting factor. They are good at conveying information, but you want to ensure that people have really taken the learning to heart in a transformative way you need to engage with learner. Thus, when it comes to the Leadership course in safeguarding, you have to take this in a group with tutors.  

Online learning to support face-to-face teaching

A very different example of is the use of online learning to support face-to-face teaching. In most Theological Training Institutions this is how they started using a Virtual Learning Environment. The VLE (in most cases using Moodle) was a place for students to upload essays and for staff to post reading and lecture handouts. Other activities might be added, a discussion forum to continue conversation outside of the lecture, or a form for collecting student evaluations. However, many tutors have seen their teaching transformed by what is known as the flipped classroom approach. Here the bulk of the information transfer and basic learning is done prior to a teaching session on the VLE and the precision face-to-face time is then used for discussion, contextualisation and application of that learning. I will repeat one of my favourite quotes from a student –“the flipped classroom means that I now ask the question in class that used to only occur to me on the drive home”. 

Onsite/online or perhaps "own time learning" and "live sessions"

Can you have a face-to-face meeting with someone 200 miles away? Is there any form of learning that is not “in person”? The terms we use to describe online learning can be confusing. Indeed, the advent of Zoom and similar technologies did make some longstanding experts in online learning uneasy. They had developed sophisticated methods for remote learning, including different ways of promoting student-student and student-tutor interaction. Zoom is an online technology so if that is all you use for your teaching does that mean you are doing online learning. Similarly a one-to-one Zoom call can feel more face-to-face than sitting in a crowded room listening to someone at the front. In the Ministry Development Team we distinguish between “onsite” and “online” learning, but that leaves us with also having to distinguish between synchronous and asynchronous learning. I was in a conversation this week with Mark Rodel of Ely Diocese. There they talk about "own time learning" and "live sessions". Live session could be onsite or on Zoom. Own time learning could be online but could be reading a book. So, applying this to the “flipped classroom” I mentioned last week, it could be online activities with a the “live session” on Zoom to reflect, contextualise and apply that learning, or it could be large amount of pre-reading and writing something before an onsite meeting with a tutor to discuss it. Both are flipped classroom. The latter is also a description of what I believe to be the Oxbridge tutorial system. Some new pedagogical methods are not that new.

Semi-synchronous learning

People learn from people. The biggest weakness of a standalone online course is its lack of interaction with other learners or with experts/tutors. The biggest strength is you can take the course whenever suits you. The technical term here is asynchronous learning, as opposed to synchronous learning in a class room or zoom session. However some of the most interesting pedagogical approaches I have come across use what I would call semi-synchronous learning. Here a groups of say 20 learners begin a 10 week course online. They can each access the online course when they want, engage with the material and post to discussion forum in their own time. However they commit to doing the same material in the same week as the rest of the cohort. This means the discussion forum will connect them with other people engaging in the same material. Other online tools such as wikis can do the same. Thus they learn together week by week without ever being in the same place at the same time. This does work well, especially with an active tutor/mentor supporting discussions. Note that this tutor does not have to be the person who wrote the course. Obviously this can be supplemented by zoom or in person events, but the primary pedagogy is learning together asynchronously.

Use Multiple Methods

So which is the “best” method of learning? Over the last few weeks I have given a recap of different approaches to online learning, highlighting a few examples with their strengths and weaknesses. What I assume is clear to us all is that different approaches fit different learning objectives better than others, and it is important to pick the right set of tools for the particular task. However I would also suggest that different methods will suit different people better. For some, coming out for the evening to a warm teaching space has big advantages. For others, learning from home is incredibly important. For those with poor internet bandwidth, asynchronous online is much better than synchronous because you can wait while a video loads, but being the person with a weak signal in a Zoom session is horrible. My hope over the coming years is that the church will be able to offer multiple ways to help Christians to learn, so that in any diocese they can choose the course that suits them. Given the current financial circumstances in most dioceses this is something that will best be achieved if we share our learning resources. It can take weeks or months to develop a good online course, it takes just minutes to share it to another diocese.