New Instructors Perspectives on Remote Teaching Methods

Abstract With the transition to remote learning due to the spread of COVID-19, there have been inconsistencies among instructors on how to deliver remote instructions for their classes. Instructors have had their own motivations to pursue a particular remote teaching approach. These motivations vary between personal preferences and class-driven factors. However, most of these approaches fit under two main paradigms: synchronous instructions, and asynchronous (flipped) instructions. Both approaches have their pros and cons. The synchronous lecturing approach is the closest to the traditional lecturing model. In synchronous lectures, new concepts are presented during the online lecture time, and the students apply that learning through homework assignments. Thus, it is easier to manage and prepare for a synchronous classroom than an asynchronous classroom. However, working remotely challenged this traditional approach, and instructors needed to consider other factors. Working from home added plenty of challenges and distractors to the students that were not present in a physical classroom. With ample distractors, the attention span of most students dropped below normal levels, which motivated instructors to adopt different active learning activities during the class time to better grasp students' attention. In addition, many instructors allowed the recording of their synchronous lectures in case some students needed to refer back to the lecture content at their convenience. On the other hand, asynchronous instructions rely on completing instructional videos before class and focusing on discussions and activities during class. In recent years, the flipped classroom started to gain popularity among engineering faculty. Flipped classrooms allow students to go through the course contents at their own pace then share their opinions during discussions encouraging higher engagement and exposing gaps in understanding. Previous research suggests that student learning is improved in the flipped compared to the traditional classroom. To ensure that students complete the video lectures before the class, readiness assessment techniques, like quizzes, can be adopted. In a remote setup, the flipped approach seems to address the challenges faced by the synchronous model. However, this method adds an extra workload on the instructors. They have to pre-record and edit the video lectures, design quizzes to enforce understanding of the video materials, and design remote-friendly active learning activities for the class discussions. In this work, we study the perspective and experience of new faculty on the use of different approaches for online teaching. The study considers 12 different courses that were taught at the department hosting this study over the period from Spring 2020 to Summer 2020. Instructor surveys and interviews were conducted to quantify their motivation to pursue different remote teaching approaches, and these will be content-analyzed to determine the perspectives of the instructors to synchronous and asynchronous learning. Supported by students' end-of-semester feedback, the authors would recommend practices to manage and lead both synchronous and asynchronous classrooms effectively.