FINDING BALANCE IN THE PREPARATION AND DELIVERY
OF ONLINE TEACHING
Eric Lynch
Kanda University of International Studies
INTRODUCTION
With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, and the subsequent decision to teach classes
online, all teachers at the university were tasked with getting materials fit for purpose. As acourse coordinator I was to provide direction — with the input of the management team— to the33 teachers who taught the course. Early discussions concerned what would comprise asufficient level of preparedness — how much did we need to have prepped? And how muchactual teaching was reasonable, feasible, over the Zoom software, given that initial experiencesuggested it to be surprisingly taxing? The following article will reflect on some of my decisionmaking processes in these novel conditions.
KEY CONCERNSHow Much to Prepare?
Some teachers, admirably, maintained that to feel prepared they wanted a whole store ofmaterials lined up and ready to go before classes were due to start. This would entail a hugeamount of work, but the logic was clear: it is hard to fault being prepared. Yet my feeling — little
more than a hunch — was that while this might benefit some teachers, it may also be too muchfor others and even be of limited utility. I felt a day-by-day approach - a week at a stretch - would
be more practical and effective; that we be ready in the initial days for the next couple of lessons,then take stock, reflect and react, asking ourselves: Has the material worked? Was the lesson
successful? How best to respond?
I felt staying agile was a more viable option than drilling down and producing reams of untested
material. This perhaps seemed counterintuitive — and again, based on nothing more than afeeling — but what I wished to avoid was a situation whereby a teacher amassed a real trancheof materials and then found them to be unsuitable. It seemed to me there were two probableoutcomes here: first, that a teacher would be demoralised, her labor in vain or, and more
problematically, that a teacher would persist in using these materials, unwilling to let them go
to waste. In the first case sympathies go to the teacher, but very much to the students in thelatter.
So, as a coordinator, I advocated a slower-paced, more reactive approach to planning andmaterial development. The teachers were free to go about their planning as they chose but I
hoped that the policy I was advising might at least take the pressure off some and obviate
unnecessary work.
19.	  Finding	  Balance	  in	  the	  Preparation	  and	  Delivery	  on	  Online	  Teaching.	  Eric	  Lynch.	  Pages	  76-­‐78.	  Literacies	  &	  Language	  Education:	  Research	  &	  Practice,	  2020	  Special	  Section:	  Teaching	  During	  a	  Pandemic.	  English	  Language	  Institute,	  KUIS.

I was also convinced that lessons would proceed at a much slower pace, that the online nature
would trammel understanding and efficiency to some degree — that things would take longer
to do, in short. And in taking longer the materials would last longer, giving more time to reflect
and evaluate. Yet I worried that it was the wrong advice and I did not want to underserve
teachers; so this caused me some anxiety until someone shared an article from Harvard Business
Publishing, with one passage in particular speaking to that feeling I had. The article explained it
was important to be realistic, recommending teachers to “cut your expected outcomes andproductivity goals by half. If you have four desired outcomes to achieve in an in-person class,plan to accomplish one or two virtually.” (Green et al., 2020). Realistically, we have to expect
things taking longer, less getting done than we would like, but at the same time the very natureof the online classes afforded more reflective opportunities, more time to evaluate what waseffective and what was not. While I cannot claim this as vindication, it did go a considerable wayto relieving some of that nagging doubt.
How Long Should We Teach?
Mindful of “Zoom fatigue”, where students and teachers alike suffer from tired eyes andawkward posture as a result of sitting constantly in front of a screen, our university settled on arecommended strategy of a lesson being 50% synchronous and the remainder asynchronous, i.e.
45 minutes of a 90-minute class should be spent online and the second half offline, wherestudents do assignments.
In the early days of my classes there was so much set-up involved, so many systems orrequirements to explain to the students, that my classes always went far longer than therecommended 50% synchronous, and I worried that I was going to burn out both the students
and myself. When I finally ended a class at around the 45-minute mark, having assigned theasynchronous tasks, two things happened. First, I felt like a fraud: that I had not done my job,that this was too little. Second, I thought I detected disappointment in some of the students’eyes, that they wanted more.
Accordingly, I started regularly asking my classes which was better: 50%
synchronous/asynchronous, or longer classes? When asked verbally students almost invariably
asked for longer classes, so to offset possible peer pressure I made use of the new Zoom pollingfeature, where they could vote anonymously. The results stayed the same: the students wanted
longer classes with typically 90% or more preferring this.
For a few weeks I regularly reviewed their options, asking them if this was to their satisfaction
and it remained constant: they still wanted longer synchronous sessions. Consequently, while
many teachers hewed — with legitimacy — to the guidelines, I found myself teaching a minimumof 70 minutes online in every single class, with the full 90 minutes not being unusual. I worried
about the small number of students in a class who had expressed a preference for shorter online
lessons, and encouraged anyone who was experiencing discomfort to contact me or write about
it in their reflections, but I never got a single case of this, and in subsequent polls these votes
disappeared. Nonetheless I am aware of possible peer pressure at work here and I do try to keepa keen eye out for signs of distress or discomfort but as we, at the time of writing, approach theend of the semester the students still appear motivated and engaged.

So what lesson can I draw from this? The one that seems most pertinent is the value ofnegotiating with your students, that when they state a legitimate preference a teacher can gain
a lot of trust and goodwill from acceding to them, or at least meeting halfway.
CONCLUSION
In addition to all the very real and legitimate worries a pandemic throws up, it also introduced
the above doubts to my roles as teacher and coordinator. Old sureties were suddenly called intoquestion, while well-intentioned university guidelines did not necessarily all seem to tally withstudent needs.
I found a feeling, a hunch, to be an unsatisfactory way to advocate strategy; in the absence ofliterature on unprecedented circumstances like this it was hard and somewhat daunting to trust
to do what felt right, but upon reflection I have few regrets.
In regards to finding a satisfactory online lesson length, it was liberating to turn to the students,
to let them find a duration that felt sufficient and let them help me find some balance.

REFERENCES
Green, L., Ringel, R., & Tarallo, B. (2020, May 13th). 5 steps to stay focused when teaching online.
https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/5-steps-to-stay-focused-when-teaching-online