Episode 568: Set It and Forget It

Ron Popeil is a master at creating products for TV. He had his rotisserie oven. And he said, set it and forget it. Set it and forget it. Set it and forget it. You just set it and forget it. You just set it. And you forget about it. You just set it and then forget it. You just set it and forget it. Set it and forget about it.

You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, The Research Library Rock and Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and a young man named Atticus. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you are here for, we hope you dig it.

Today's show is called Set It and Forget It. CHARLIE BENNETT: Forget about it. Yeah, that phrase was once associated with a home kitchen rotisserie oven.

One should not think too much about that part of our nation's history.

But we are repurposing that phrase for today's show. So in education, what might you set and forget?

An email automatic response.

The thermostat in one's office.

Sure, both answers are correct. But we were looking for asynchronous instruction.

Asynchronous instruction, or teaching that doesn't happen at the same time as the learning, like a YouTube video or a learning module. FRED RASCOE: Asynchronous instruction is a lot like the QR code. CHARLIE BENNETT: How's that, Fred?

Well, both have been around for a long time. But the COVID pandemic made them much more popular. I know I use them more now than I used to.

Yeah, well, we've been talking about instruction this year, including shows on the ideal library curriculum, AI in education, and classes based on library services. Today we're going to talk about asynchronous instruction and our experiences with it as students, as teachers, and as librarians.

And our songs today are about setting plans in motion, balancing change with tradition, and the absence of human contact. The days of all students in one room all the time are over. In today's classroom, in addition to asynchronous learning, there's electronic supplementary engagement, hybrid, remote, in-person classes, and totally virtual classes. In today's electronic learning environment, you just never know who's zoomin' who.

Fred?

Yeah.

Not only is this not about Zoom. But also, it's Who's Zooming Whom?

OK, well, let's start with Who's Zooming Whom by Aretha Franklin right here on Lost in the Stacks.

Who's Zoomin' Who by Aretha Franklin. This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Set It and Forget It. We're talking about asynchronous instruction. So let's start at the beginning. What's synchronous instruction? And why do we have asynchronous instruction? Marlee, I feel like of the three of us, you're the expert here--

Oh. CHARLIE BENNETT: --of the three of us. Mm-hmm.

How would you define synchronous instruction in a way that everyone here can easily understand? MARLEE GIVENS: Synchronous instruction is where the instruction happens in real time, whether that's in the same room or virtually, but where the students and the instructor are in the room at the same time. And they're receiving the instruction at the same time that the instruction is being presented.

Yeah.

When we say asynchronous instruction, we're talking about, well, I think maybe said it best at the beginning, when the teaching doesn't happen at the same time as the learning. If you record a video of your class and then send it to the students, if you have a module that they read over and then have to take an assessment based on that, something like that. Fred, how would you define asynchronous instruction?

I think when we talk about asynchronous, we tend to think that everything in that particular class happens asynchronously, like the instructor has the material. And the student accesses it in a different time.

That's the set it and forget it joke, yeah.

Right. With any class, of course, there's always an asynchronous element. Like here's a chapter. Read that before next time. And that happens all at different times whenever the student gets around to it, or not in my case.

Fred.

But when we say asynchronous learning, I think that even though there's asynchronous parts of any kind of learning, we're really talking about there's only the separation between instructor and student in that same time.

Yeah. So as a teacher, you basically have to build a not just reading list, but a set of readings, or viewings, or activities, and then walk away from that. Step away and let the students engage them the way they want to engage them at the right time.

Mm-hmm.

Have you all done asynchronous as teachers, as students, as--

Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: --librarians helping? Yes, she says. See? This is the expert thing. All of the above, yeah. I mean, a long time ago, I did like a continuing education thing that was mostly asynchronous. Materials were made available to me online. And I would have a week to get through module one, say, and then take an assessment. And then I'd get the keys to module two.

That's right. It doesn't open until you've done the scaffolding, yeah. MARLEE GIVENS: And I also used to and continue to create learning objects, basically packages of courses that are coded into a software. And then they're put on the internet. And students can kind of-- the great thing is that students can go through them at their own pace. And some students can click through very quickly and get to the assessment. And they're good. And others, they can get to the assessment.

When you've done this, Marlee, have you done it in a for-credit situation, like the student on the other end is going to get an A, or a B, or a C, or whatever in a class?

Not directly. I've been tangential to that because during the lockdown. So during the 2020 to '21 school year, all of the English 1101, 1102 classes here at Georgia Tech were taught asynchronously. And so the ones that invited me in to give the library instruction, they said we need you to make a video. And then we'll give it to the students. And yeah.

Yeah. Fred, how about you? Student or instructor, asynchronous?

I have done some of those creation of modules on our learning platform, kind of in the same way that Marlee mentioned. You can learn library skills. And if an instructor wants to take that and make it a part of their course.

Yeah.

But I think in actual classroom setting, where teaching students for a grade, the only example I have-- I've never taken one like that myself. But at the start of the COVID pandemic, spring of 2020, Charlie, you and I were teaching a class called GT1000, sort of an introductory first-year student course just to--

The freshman seminar.

Right. To get the--

The first-year seminar, excuse me.

Right. To get them used to things that are available at a university. And in March, of course, everything shut down.

Oh my goodness, yeah, that got them used to the way some things would be in a university.

And so we had to have some synchronous Zoom meetings when we could. But a lot out of the rest of that class was, OK, we posted some things that you've got to learn this week online. We send an email. Hey, here's the things you got to learn and go and access them. And we would check and see if they did.

And because we were sort of improvising that, we did not have a lot of time to build the path or--

No, it was not an ideal asynchronous learning situation.

So it really came down to please read this, so we know that you've absorbed this material. I've taken multiple asynchronous courses in my grad work because I did an online or a remote library degree. And I think every class I took in that program had some asynchronous element. And there were a couple that were purely asynchronous. Like I don't even know what the teacher looks like, much less what they sound like. I have had a very hard-- I'm going to say this in front of my team leader.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So I think I have not yet done it. I think I am a newbie.

My observation of you as a teacher is that you're very spontaneous. And you're extemporaneous.

Yeah.

And you take in information from the students. And you build on the fly. And that is impossible in an asynchronous-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Utterly impossible. MARLEE GIVENS: --yes, environment. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about the good, bad, and the ugly of asynchronous instruction after a music set on Lost in the Stacks.

Hey, buddy, you want to be on the radio?

File this set under LB 1044.87.E96 and then forget it. [MUSIC PLAYING] Right off the bat I was scared what you think. Barely--

That was Someplace by Nick Waterhouse. And before that, Step Back by the Coathangers. And we started with Plans by The Worriers, songs about making a plan to intentionally step back and be somewhere else.

This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Set It and Forget It. What we're setting is asynchronous instruction. But let's be honest. You can't forget it.

Yeah, you have to take part in asynchronous instruction, even if you've built a course that the students can travel on their own time.

Right, right. FRED RASCOE: Although, that's what we're debating here today, or discussing. I mean, will you forget it? Is it more likely to be forgotten if it's asynchronous?

Oh, nice, nicely done.

Yeah, well, and it is. It is because when you're teaching synchronously, you come back fresh every time you offer that instruction. So you're constantly, at least me, I'm constantly figuring out what I can revise and what I can improve every time I do it. But if I create a tutorial and I put it up online, I don't come back to regularly. I mean, maybe once a year or maybe if someone says, hey, this has gotten out of date. Yeah, that doesn't really happen for me.

That's right.

So they're in the learning mode when they go into access that content.

They're putting it into their own schedule. They're getting it when they need it at their point of need, if it's like a tutorial for a process and even classes. If you are doing a semester-long asynchronous class, it's probably going to take about the same amount of work that it would for a synchronous class. But you're doing it on your own time, the way you want to do it.

I think for asynchronous instruction, definitely it's a benefit when there's chunks of things to be delivered asynchronously maybe in conjunction with other things. Like for example, in the library instruction that we have, we create these online modules, like Marlee was talking about, how to do this with a library technology, how to do this with a database, et cetera. It's a five-minute video. You set it and forget it. The student learns it.

I tried to build one. And I had a very hard time with it. It was a six-week course. The thing I didn't have a hard time with though was plotting out how it would work, how each part would work with itself. I was able to put together the puzzle of the class much easier than when I'm trying to teach a regular mini-mester, a regular class, where there's a lot of feedback and sort of road testing of the syllabi. And the students are present and almost destructively so in the teaching.

Yeah, set it and forget it.

My son is starting college at Georgia State this year. And he wants to do film studies. And so this is going to be his first semester of classes. And one of his classes is entirely asynchronous. There is no in-person instruction at all. So I'm going to be interested to-- that's probably the class I'm going to ask him about the most because I want to see. He hated COVID instruction.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And so I want to see what it's like when there's like absolutely no instructor in real time at any point in the semester. I'm interested in seeing how that plays out.

Have you built anything like that, Marlee?

Again, not really in the university setting. I used to work for a non-profit that created instruction for people to pay for, continue education type courses. And we had a couple of topics that we turned into these six-module packages people would pay for. And they would get access to it for a year or something like that, so they could really take their time. And yeah, you don't get any feedback.

Right.

I mean, you might do a survey and say, how did you like this? Or someone might contact you with questions. But that in the moment like light bulb, you never really get that. And you don't really know if you're meeting someone's needs. I think when you're in the same room, at some point and you're having a discussion that you get a little bit more.

I think it's really telling that even though the prompt for our show script says, what's worked for you, we couldn't quite get a lot of enthusiasm over the success of asynchronous instruction.

OK, maybe we'll come back to that in the third segment. You are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll talk more about asynchronous instruction on the left side of the hour.

You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show.

Today's show is called Set It and Forget It. We're talking about asynchronous instruction. I'd like to read a little bit of an article called The Synchronous Versus Asynchronous Balancing Act written by Dan Levy and published on The Harvard Business Publishing website in 2020. Levy writes, "Where I teach, online classes generally get recorded. Students can watch the recorded videos if they cannot attend the live session.

"When I'm trying to decide, I ask myself, is this a class I could attend while folding my laundry? If the answer is yes, I watch the recording. If the answer is no, I attend the live session."

Levy continues, "While I think that in general we should design both synchronous and asynchronous experiences that students find so engaging that they cannot fold the laundry at the same time, I think the spirit of this question might help inform your decision-- that is to say the teacher-- of what to reserve for asynchronous learning. If the students can conceivably fold their laundry while engaging in the experience, my advice is either to eliminate it or reserve it for asynchronous learning."

You just heard-- well, actually, can you read that? Read that in your best demand right there. No? Oh OK. Leave Me Alone by New Order. That's not how they sing it on the song. A song about what happens when you intentionally avoid human contact.

This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Set It and Forget It. We've been talking about our experiences with asynchronous instructing as instructors and as students too. So we've kind of leaned towards the negative side of asynchronous.

That sounds just like us, doesn't it?

Yeah. So what is it about asynchronous that we need to change? Or what is it about synchronous that gives us something that we can't get with asynchronous learning?

Well, off air Marlee diagnosed my problem pretty well. My teaching style-- and this is a style. It's not really-- I can't say this is my strategy that I've thought through. But my style in the classroom is very reactive, very improvisational. I look at the students for cues. And I feed off of their responses. I ask for their participation in ways that are not, what is the answer to this question? Very good. But more like, so what do you think of that? Give me an example of that.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. I mean, you've had enough experience at this point that you can bring in some of the best aspects of that student feedback. And you can package it into an asynchronous--

Oh, that's a really good-- OK, yeah, absolutely.

--event. I mean, one thing that really, I think, that's always recommended for asynchronous is to use storytelling practices to make it more engaging.

Right.

So you can actually picture a student that you've had to try to grab and try to reach and use those same tactics to grab that attention even in the asynchronous mode.

I had not thought of that. But if the language I use in those modules, those sort of almost PowerPoint slide style flash ups, like click on the next one, click on the next one, if the language is informed by what students have asked about or what they have required in terms of how to explain an idea, yeah, that could be better. How about you, Fred?

The asynchronous bits of a class, we-- I guess getting back to what you said originally about improvising in class and how Marlee said that was like one of your strengths, which I agree. Having seen you teach, I agree it is. It's kind of that Socratic ideal of a classroom that we all kind of strive for. Maybe we don't always quite get there.

And then we'll drink hemlock at the end of it.

And the students don't necessarily want that. They've got a loaded schedule. And they've got to-- we may have this idea as instructors that there's this knowledge that we're imparting to them by having a free-flowing discussion in class. But a lot of the percentage of the things that are in class, the students just need to check it off so I can get to the next thing. And maybe we need to think about accommodating that because it can't all be that Socratic ideal.

Isn't that the death of teaching though, like just not being able to do some kind of Socratic?

I would never eliminate in person. And I think I've even said in this episode that I can't see how an entire class can be completely asynchronous. But I think there's so much that gets packed into a semester. And I think instructors would agree that time with the students is so precious that there needs to be asynchronous component so that the students can get the most out of it.

And just because it's asynchronous doesn't mean that it's like apersonality. I mean, you can still bring your personality into it. And in fact, I mean, during the pandemic, I attended a lot of webinars about how to do this, how to do this hybrid environment, and so on. And it's very simple things. Like if you're teaching a semester-long class, record a welcome video and put yourself on camera and let your personality come out. And then the students can record their own welcome video back.

But that's not what we as instructors should strive for. And I think that what we want to strive for is that dialogue in the classroom. And we're really afraid that introducing these asynchronous components will eliminate that, like it can't be replicated in a, oh, put some messages on the discussion board and classmates can respond to it and get a discussion going. I've had experiences like that in graduate school in online classes, where there wasn't asynchronous component of discussion.

And you get called on, yeah.

And it's just a screen you're staring at in an empty room. Well, so it's the end of the segment. Do any of us have a kind of magic wand style improvement of asynchronous instruction? Like if you could change one thing about it and know that it would change, could you quote unquote, "fix" it at all?

I think that I would require at least some in-person component for a semester-long class. I'm not talking about our library instruction, where we just release these little videos about how to manage data or how to work a database or something like that, how to search a database. I mean, for a semester-long class, I don't know how effective it could to be entirely asynchronous. But I am happy to be proved wrong.

No, I do not.

Well, we're never going to fix it, are we?

We never fix anything on this show, do we?

No, no. And yet, this is still Lost in the Stacks. And it's time for a music set.

File this set under TX656.S36. [SLOW BONE, "CHANGING AIN'T EASY] I miss the people's faces when the time--

That was Get the Balance Right by Depeche Mode. And we started out with Changing Ain't Easy by Slow Bone, songs about the challenges of balancing change with tradition.

Today's show is called Set It and Forget It. And we talked about asynchronous instruction, the good and the bad, and maybe even the ugly.

A little bit.

Yeah. So thinking about that laundry test, as an instructor, I might take offense if my students were folding laundry during my class. But I really can't take offense because I have my things that I can do while folding laundry. We all do. What's yours, Fred?

Watching Ron Popeil infomercials.

Come on.

Seriously, TV is the thing usually. It's on the weekend. And it's like right around sometime before lunch. And so if I'm folding laundry, I've got something on, some streaming thing that I'm watching, yeah.

Charlie?

I have quote unquote "attended" nearly all of our library all employees meetings while folding laundry.

That was going to be my answer too.

Yeah.

Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's an easy one. Yep, yep. CHARLIE BENNETT: Synchronous or asynchronous, whether it's the video or whether it's live.

I've definitely done a lot of email checking and things like that during classes, but never folding laundry.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, this is me. I'm the one that's supposed to say, roll the credits.

CHARLIE BENNETT: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library. Written and produced by me, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.

Me. Legal counsel and Ronco Turnip Twaddler were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.

How long has he had that?

I think Opus got one of those. Special thanks to all our students and instructors for helping us understand teaching a little better. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.

Our page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.

On next week's show, we meet a new member of the library faculty, the resource acquisitions librarian. Technical services represent.

Time for our last song today. And it occurs to me that asynchronous learning is a lot like the movie, The Breakfast Club.

Fred, these are all just out of the dark. OK, so it's a syrupy gen-x fantasy.

It's slightly overrated. CHARLIE BENNETT: Kind of problematic. FRED RASCOE: Asynchronous learning might be all of those things. And I won't argue with that. But I was thinking about how that movie is about adapting to loneliness in a learning environment.

Oh gosh, OK.

So let's end our show--

It's a stretch.

--about lonely learning the same way The Breakfast Club ended. This is Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. Have a great weekend, everybody.

There's no football field for us to walk across with our fingerless gloves and a fist in the air.