People sitting on floor working on laopt tops with drawing of computer screen behind them.

Asynchronous Learning Activities

Asynchronous learning activities don’t require students to be online at the same time. For example:

  • Writing a private reflection
  • Watching a video
  • Collaboratively editing a shared online document
  • Giving peer feedback
  • Participating in a forum discussion

Asynchronous learning activities give students flexibility and provide extra time to process, practice, reflect or respond.

Directed asynchronous activity which students are expected to engage with as part of the course counts towards scheduled learning and teaching hours. It is different to independent or self-directed learning.

Asynchronous Learning in Moodle

Asynchronous learning activties can involve many digital learning platforms (Padlet, myblog, Panopto Miro, etc.) but there are some distinct advantages to hosting activities in Moodle.

Moodle can track which students have engaged with the activity; whether individuals have viewed or submitted to the activity. Moodle can quickly filter out the students who have yet to engage, and send them a reminder message. Some Moodle activities can generate rich feedback for the learner with minimal input from the teacher.

There are many engaging Moodle activities. Don’t read too much into the names of these activities. They have multiple uses.

  • Journal: A individual, private reflection or response containing text and/or media. Journal entries are presented to teachers in a simple, scrollable list.
  • Glossary: A crowd-sourced collection of terms and definitions; or an index of concepts, scenarios, case-studies, role-models or other diverse contributions. Glossaries can be configure to enable ‘rating’ of entries by student peers.
  • Forum: Threaded discussions, queries, responses or iterations. Forums can be configured to promote depth versus breadth of expression.
  • Questionnaire: Public (but, if required, anonymous) responses to questions of various formats. Student can benchmark themselves against the aggregated views of their peers.

How to use Moodle activities for asynchronous learning

These videos illustrate how Moodle activities could be used to support asynchronous learning:

  • The “Using…” videos give an overview of the tool, and its suggested application
  • The “Setting-up…” videos demonstrate how the tool is configured.

Journal

The Journal activity allows students to express, relate or evaluate their learning using text &/or media.

Questionnaire

The Questionnaire activity can be used for a structured and directed activity that allows the students and you to assess their progress by answering questions.

Glossary

A crowd-sourced collection of terms and definitions; or an index of concepts, scenarios, case-studies, role-models or other diverse contributions. Glossaries are straightforward ways of getting your students to show their understanding of the meanings of different terms and relate applied knowledge and skills.

Forums

Forums aid in expanding the topic outside of the classroom as well as making your Moodle page more interactive. You can use Moodle forums to develop peer support and develop reflective practice. Update learners in industry news and sharing technical tips and research.

Feedback Tool

Feedback tool is an activity in Moodle which is a bit like Microsoft forms. It as more options for open text questions and allows you as the tutor to track responses. This tool can be used to develop reflective practice of skill or at the end of a lecture to help consolidate learning that has taken place.

More videos will be added during 2021-22.

Wiki Tool

The Wiki activity in Moodle is a collection of web pages that anyone can edit .The most well-known and extensive examples of a Wiki are Wiki pages in Wikipedia. The key feature of a Wiki is that it is collaboratively created and edited because anybody with access can edit it. This tool can be used to co-create lecture notes, record research, develop outlines for a final project and create a resource page of useful links to consolidate learning.