Teaching Tea in an Asynchronous Online Formatby Lindsey Stirek
Teaching Tea Online
The COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden shift to emergency remote teaching was a time of dramatic change for teachers in all fields, and it was particularly difficult for many tea teachers whose instruction typically relied heavily on hands-on, experiential learning in a controlled environment. While remote tea instruction was not unheard of prior to the pandemic, it was generally preceded by in-person instruction and considered a way to continue an established master-disciple relationship when a student had to move long-distance.
Although many teachers started teaching chanoyu online out of necessity during the pandemic, there is a history of teaching tea online at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that began long before COVID-19. After her retirement in 2011, Professor Emerita Kimiko Gunji was awarded a grant to develop an online version of her existing course on the way of tea. That course, called "Chado, the Way of Tea," was consistently popular among students and always filled rapidly during registration, leading many who were unable to get a seat in the course to ask for more sections, more seats, more courses. With limited space, time, and resources pressing against seemingly unlimited demand, Professor Gunji sought other ways to fill the demand. An asynchronous online course was a natural solution. Over the course of a summer, a film crew was brought in to create videos featuring various tea procedures, demonstrations of guest etiquette, and philosophical discussions on tea-related topics. These videos were uploaded to a learning management system—at that time, Blackboard—and structured to walk the students through different aspects of tea, from its historical contexts and philosophical underpinnings to related arts like chabana and wagashi, over the course of a semester.
The Unique Challenges of Teaching Tea Asynchronously
While teaching tea online has inherent limitations, teaching it asynchronously comes with an additional set of challenges. As with any online course, the student's physical environment is not controlled by the instructor. The experiential aspects of tea, such as the quiet and tranquil atmosphere, the delicate scents of incense and matcha, and the feeling of sitting on tatami, can only be suggested and evoked through videos and images rather than physically created for the student as tea instructors typically do. On the one hand, this potentially gives the student the freedom to create a space that suits their needs; on the other hand, the spatial and sensory experiences of each student will differ, and they will not be able to experience the intangible, communally-created atmosphere of the tearoom as shared with others. Further, in an asynchronous class, space-time is not shared simultaneously, but much of the content, like videos, is exactly reproduced for each student, and, unlike real-time instruction and tea demonstrations, asynchronous content can typically be viewed and reviewed, paused, fast forwarded, played at double speed, etc. For online chanoyu, this artificial experience creates a disconnect between students and the experience of tea, giving them one-size-fits-all, convenience-oriented content that does not match the aesthetics and philosophies underpinning the way of tea. How then can an asynchronous course create moments for students that are unique and ephemeral?
Another difficulty created by the asynchronous nature of the course is ensuring correct understanding of concepts and/or correcting misinterpretations. In a simultaneous format, instructors can typically gauge students' understanding of the material based on in-class interactions, and there is also opportunity for students to ask questions and check understanding in real-time. While students in asynchronous courses can certainly still ask questions via email, for whatever reason, they often simply do not, and subsequently, there can be a significant delay in how quickly misunderstandings can be identified and addressed, if they can even be adequately addressed at all. What then can be done to gauge and encourage understanding of the material asynchronously?
Establishing teacher-student and student peer relationships can also be challenging in online courses, and the asynchronous format amplifies the challenge by removing the element of shared time-space that is often relied upon for relationship building. For chanoyu in particular, this is a difficult challenge to overcome, as the social-experiential aspect of tea lessons is not only part of the individual's learning experience but also of the traditional pedagogy of chanoyu. The teaching of tea relies heavily upon situated learning, that is, learning that happens in whole or in part by participating in the context and community from which the knowledge arose.
Developments in the Online Asynchronous Tea Course
The original goal of the development of the online tea course over a decade ago was to make it as similar as possible to the in-person version of it while accommodating the space and resource limitations of the instructors and facilities. This goal was partially achieved, as there was no additional strain on the Japan House facility despite more than doubling the number of students enrolled in the tea courses given that instructors did not have to prepare tea for these additional students each week. However, the instructor workload in terms of grading was immense and became a strain on them. The asynchronous course was designed with a significantly higher number of assignments to make up for the lack of direct contact hours with the instructor and each assignment was given extensive individual feedback. This required hiring at least one or two grading assistants, and the course was run primarily in the summer when instructors were not busy with other courses. With anywhere between 45 and 90 students enrolling each summer and each student submitting between three and five assignments a week, it became apparent that this model was not sustainable for the instructors.
In 2021, I received a grant to produce an eText for the course in partnership with the University of Illinois Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. This eText compiled many of the writings, videos, images, and assignments from the original online course—along with newly filmed, VR-compatible 360 videos and other new multimedia assets—into a single, interactive digital textbook. The online course was then restructured to be compatible with the eText as well as to reduce the strain on instructors while maintaining, or ideally increasing, achievement of learning outcomes.
Prior to the restructuring, the course was doing an okay job of responding to the question of gauging and encouraging understanding of the material; however the way in which this was achieved, which was through quizzes, tests, and individual written responses to content-based questions, ended up further reinforcing a perception of the course as an individual pursuit while also creating a huge amount of grading work for the instructors. The course largely didn't respond to the question of accessing situated knowledge and creating unique ephemeral and sensory experiences for students.
The course is constantly evolving, and thanks to additional grant funding, I have been able to work closely with Ph.D. candidate Samantha Shoppell to implement several changes with the goal of addressing the challenges mentioned in the previous section. To create a chance for students to have unique experiential moments, we scaffold the class experience with guidelines and provide several assignments that require hands-on involvement. In the opening module of the course, we offer recommendations for how students can structure their space and learning experience. We recommend that they create a clean, uncluttered, quiet area in their living space to use while they view the temae and tokonoma videos. Throughout the course, there are several activity assignments, which include making their own wagashi, walking through the Japan House gardens (during which we advise they forego headphones and other technology), and creating their own chabana from materials they gather outside. Additionally, the final project requires students to record seemingly mundane moments via pictures and videos that they take throughout the semester and connect these to the lessons from chanoyu. Students often record seasonal changes, light patterns, and other subtle, environmental fluctuations, allowing them to notice and process the ephemeral moments around them and recognize how they can connect to tea in their own lives.
To address the deficit of contemporaneous personal connection both in terms of sharing space and sharing ideas, we created assignments that would simulate classroom discussion and experiences similar to those in the tea room. They are put into discussion groups and are responsible for scheduling five meetings throughout the semester either in person or via video conference to discuss a variety of tea topics. They also are encouraged in several activities to involve friends and classmates, and, in one activity in particular, they are asked to host a gathering for friends or family in which they utilize chanoyu guidelines about being a good host. These assignments help remove some of the isolating effects of the asynchronous format and encourage the students to build a learning community that more closely parallels the experience of learning and sharing tea.
To address hesitancy in asking questions to instructors, we built an open-ended question into most chapters of the eText which asks, "Before beginning this chapter, reflect on what you have learned so far. What questions or observations do you have? Please share one or two here." This has prompted many, though not all, students to share their thoughts and questions, giving them a chance to receive feedback and instructors a chance to track students' understanding of the material.
Pedagogical Implications of Teaching Tea Asynchronously
While these course developments have benefited the students overall, there have been some hiccups and challenges that are still being worked through. One challenge that remains is the identification and correction of misunderstandings of materials, which has occasionally been amplified by students sharing their misunderstandings with their discussion groups and the misunderstanding replacing the correct information. We are currently in the process of reviewing the eText to identify places where lack of clarity in the materials may be causing these misunderstandings.
Another challenge is that, while the grading load has been somewhat reduced, this course still creates a high workload course for the instructors, which limits possible enrollment numbers. We are continuing to grapple with the question of if this course should ever be adapted to suit a MOOC (massive open online course) learning environment, and if so, how minimal individual feedback from instructors could be implemented without compromising the students' experience. Despite creating this course and therefore opening significantly more space for students, as well as providing a way for those who wouldn't be able to participate in the in-person version to take the class, both the online and in-person versions of this course continue to experience demand beyond their capacities. The question of how we can respond to this demand in a way that is pedagogically sound remains, and it may be that our objectives and expectations must be adjusted if we are ever to truly address this question.
With our current technology, this course is not and simply cannot be a substitute for practical chanoyu lessons. That being stated, it does allow students to explore their interest in chanoyu even when their ability to access it is limited, and, when taught properly and given appropriate context, students in this asynchronous course should be able to leave with knowledge about and appreciation of chanoyu as a field of academic interest. Although demand for chanoyu at U of I continues to outpace our ability to respond to it, a course like this one, which focuses largely on the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of chanoyu, can help open the door and serve as an excellent "gateway" into other tea and Japanese arts-related courses and is a good jump start for beginning tea students to understand some of the background that often isn't discussed during tea lessons.
View the Chado: The Way of Tea asynchronous online syllabus.
To cite this page:
Stirek, Lindsey. "Teaching Tea in an Asynchronous Online Format." Teaching Tea: Culture, History, Practice, Art, Japan on Japan Past & Present. 2025. https://japanpastandpresent.org/en/projects/teaching-tea-culture-history-practice-art/resources/teaching-tea-in-an-asynchronous-online-format
Header Image:
Photo by Tyler Schank.