Teach Language

Asynchronously
Reach your students beyond the school day.
Contents

What is asynchronous teaching? 3

Benefits and Challenges 4
Ingredients of an Asynchronous 6
Classroom

Online Classroom Space 7

Community of Learners 9
Instructional Activities 11
Recommended Tools 12
Try Transparent Language Online 19
What is asynchronous teaching?
Asynchronous teaching is a student-centered approach that
facilitates learning outside of the traditional classroom. This is
achieved by incorporating various web-based tools (such as social
media, mobile apps, or blogs) that remove time and space
restrictions. These asynchronous forms of communication are
sometimes supplemented with synchronous components, such as
live chat on Skype.

In this eBook, we’ll share our best practices for setting up your online
“classroom”, including some of our favorite online learning tools.
Benefits of Asynchronous Teaching

Image by Brad Flickinger

Flexibility
Students have unlimited access to the online instructional materials.

Reach
Off-campus students, working professionals, and international
learners can all have equal access to the materials.

Differentiation
Students can learn at their own pace and in their own style. Those
who need more time can take it, while others can speed through.

Data
Online learning platforms often provide a record of class activity so
you can account for students’ progress and learning.
Challenges of Asynchronous Teaching

Image by Jay Tamboli

Cost
Initial set up can be costly in terms of time and money. Teachers
need to plan further in advance when using asynchronous methods
to ensure the technology is in place.

Training
Teachers and students need to be well-versed in different
technologies and platforms.

Support
Even well-trained teachers will need tech support when things go
wrong.

Access
Not all students will have equal access to internet, devices, etc. We’ll
discuss ways to overcome this challenge later in the eBook.
 Image by Andrea Goh

The 3 Ingredients of an
Asynchronous Classroom

Learning Management System (LMS)

Community of Learners

Learning Tasks & Feedback

 Learning Management System
Also called a Learning Management System (LMS), this is your online
space where you put all of your stuff. A good LMS will provide space or
functionality for the following:

•Learning – activities, assignments

•Interaction – with the material, you, and their peers
•Discussion – with you and their peers
•Assessment – virtual gradebook, ways to send feedback
•Report – share progress with students, parents, administrators, etc.

Discuss

Interact Assess

LMS

Learn Report
 Learning Management System
We recommend spending at least one day (if not more) introducing
students to the LMS. Even if your students are digital natives, walking
them through the program and pointing out the different features
ensures they’re all on the same page.

In addition to the obvious things like learning content and assessments,

we also recommend including the following in your LMS:

•Tutorials: Create a short video

tutorial walking students through the
LMS that can be watched
To create a
throughout the school year if video tutorial…
students forget.

•Announcements: Share
administrative and cultural
announcements to establish a strong
online presence. Share articles
about current events in the target
culture, send reminders about
assignments, etc.

•Resource Library: Include a list of

recommended sites and tools,
We recommend downloading
including: online bilingual Jing, a free screencasting
dictionaries, conjugation tools, program that takes a video of
reputable target language news your computer screen and
sites, etc. uploads it to the web or saves it
as a file on your computer.
•Tech Support: You can’t be there
You can easily record with Jing,
24/7 to help your students with tech walk through the LMS, and
problems. Provide contact info for upload the video to your
your LMS’s tech support hotline or Tutorials section.
email.
 Community of Learners
Isolation in online learning is always a risk. We know that teachers
aren’t “always online” waiting for their students, but you can use
tools to make it appear so. Take time to connect with your students
and create a strong online presence. To foster a sense of
community, we recommend:

•Posting an introductory video: Make

a video (remember: Jing!) in which
you introduce yourself, discuss your
background with the language, set
some expectations for the class, etc.
Put a voice and a face to your
name.

•Providing constant contact: The

more students hear from you, the
better. You can set up a free
account with Remind.com, a simple
messaging service that reaches
nearly any device. Using Remind, you
can send text messages, video
messages, and more. The best part:
you can queue up these messages
in advance! You can schedule
assignment reminders, happy holiday
texts, and more at the beginning of
the semester.

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 Community of Learners
Don’t have the budget for an LMS but still want to build a class
community and start a discussion? Try Twitter! (Note: this is best used with
older students, high-school age and above.)

• Create a Twitter account named for your class, such as “Roseville HS

French”. Ask your students to follow your page, where you can post
images, share news articles, tweet a Word of the Day, etc.
• Create a hashtag for your class, such as #RHSFrench1 for your first
period French class. Ask students to use this hashtag any time
they’re tweeting to the class—students can follow this hashtag and
contribute to the conversation.

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 Instructional Activities
The third ingredient of asynchronous teaching is the meat of the course:
the learning materials and instructional activities. What makes for a
good activity?

Input: Give students some kind of input (or learning material) that uses
authentic, relevant language and can be consumed at the learner’s
own pace.

Output: Provide students an opportunity to demonstrate what they’ve

learned.

Feedback: Look at the output and use that as an opportunity to

provide feedback, both positive and negative.

Output
• Rich target • Correction
language • Interactive, • Progress
• Self-paced engaging
• Authentic
Input Feedback

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 Recommended Tools: QUIA
Listening & Reading Activities
QUIA (Quintessential Instructional Archive) is a freemium site, with some
features offered free and others requiring a subscription. It’s essentially
a crowdsourced repository of educational games, quizzes, surveys, and
more created and shared by teachers around the world.

You can search by subject (such as your language) and select from
existing games and activities, like those shown below, or create your
own! Many of the games offered, including matching and flashcard
activities, focus on listening and reading skills.

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 Recommended Tools: IPADIO
Speaking Activities

iPadio is a free app available for both iOS and Android™ devices
that allows you to livestream audio. More interestingly for teachers, it
allows you to collect audio data. Students can call a free 800
number from any phone (even an old school rotary phone!) and
record a message for you. This is a great way to facilitate
asynchronous speaking assignments, since students can place the
call at any time and you can log in to iPadio to review on your own
time as well.

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Android is a trademark of Google, Inc.

Recommended Tools: VoiceThread
Listening, Speaking, Reading, & Writing
VoiceThread is not free, but it’s an affordable app that describes itself as
a way to “transform media into collaborative spaces with video, voice,
and text commenting.” Grab an image or video, share it with your entire
class, and let students contribute via microphone, webcam, text, phone,
and audio-file upload. This collaborative platform is great for telling
stories, discussing current events in the target culture, etc.

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 Recommended Tools:
Transparent Language Online
Listening, Speaking, Reading, & Writing

Transparent Language Online is a one-stop shop for asynchronous

language teachers. You can create your own classroom, enroll
students, make assignments and assessments, send announcements,
see student progress reports, and more.

Best of all, you can work with our content (available in 100+
languages), create your own, or use a mix of both. The platform
includes more than a dozen game-like activities that build listening,
speaking, reading, and writing skills.

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 Recommended Tools:
Transparent Language Online
Listening & Speaking Activities

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 Recommended Tools:
Transparent Language Online
Reading & Writing Activities

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 Recommended Tools:
Transparent Language Online
Teacher Tools

Teacher and admin tools in Transparent Language Online were

designed to help you create, assign, and track lessons as quickly
and efficiently as possible. The average teacher can make a lesson
like the one pictured below—complete with text, audio, images,
vocab-building activities, comprehension activities, and more—in
less than 20 minutes.

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 Eria nimoditatia voluptatas aut la
nimint molore velenda debissitio.

Image by Wolfgang Lonlen

Transparent Language Online was designed

with asynchronous teaching in mind. The
platform is compatible with desktop devices
and tablets and also includes free access to a
companion mobile app.

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©2016 Transparent Language, Inc. All rights reserved.