The MA English program currently runs all coursework
asynchronously, meaning that students are never required to be live-online at any specific time during the semester. Instead, students in asynchronous courses have windows of time (usually a one-week unit window) during which to complete certain requirements for the course; e.g. reading a specified amount of material and completing a specified amount of discussion posts. Asynchronous coursework allows for
maximum flexibility and accessibility by leaving it up to students to determine for themselves when to complete their weekly course requirements. In the past this flexibility and accessibility has worked well and been essential for a program such as ours, which draws students from around the country and globe, many of whom have jobs or other life situations that require maximum flexibility and accessibility.
As a result of the covid pandemic, though, online synchronous and hybrid courses have become common across higher education. Synchronous courses run 100% live on zoom, at a regularly-scheduled day and time each week, and require no other weekly classroom activity. A synchronous course always meets live online for two hours and forty minutes each week; which is the amount of classroom time required for a three-credit course. Hybrid courses meet live-online for half of the required weekly class time (i.e. one hour and twenty minutes) and then students complete the other half of the weekly required time in asynchronous ways (e.g., posting and conversing in written discussion forums).
The question here is if our grad students want some synchronous and/or hybrid options on the schedule in future semesters. There are a few complexities to consider. First, note that we have students located across numerous time zones, including all of those zones in the Americas and sometimes in Europe and Asia. So if a zoom or hybrid course were scheduled to meet on a Tuesday, at 4pm eastern, this would be 3pm in Chicago, 1pm in San Francisco, 8pm in London, 5pm in Buenos Aires, 5am the next morning in Tokyo, etc. Second, note that if a class is synchronous or hybrid, online zoom attendance would be required each week, not optional. Third, total courses offered in a semester would remain the same, so we wouldn't be able to run six or seven asynchronous courses plus additional synchronous and hybrid courses; rather, the amount of synchronous or hybrid courses added to the schedule would result in that many fewer asynchronous offerings.
So with all of that in mind, please share your thoughts on the questions below.
