Why I (Generally) Prefer Asynchronous Online Learning

It feels like the scramble is on! So many educators are planning and preparing for fall, and now that August is just around the corner, it's starting to feel "really real"--and the pressure is rising on doing things well.

In July I presented a series of webinars about different aspects of online teaching and learning, as so many schools are working to boost their teachers' skills at leveraging distance teaching techniques. I am pleased that so many folks are "hoping for the best but planning for the worst." (I'm not convinced, personally, that teaching online is "the worst," but I know what they mean when they say this.) Over 500 teachers participated in the series of webinars, which was personally gratifying for me, but more than that, so many of them expressed gratitude for the sharing of tips and techniques to boost their skills.

But as a result, I have had a fair number of people reach out to me recently to ask about synchronous vs. asynchronous online learning, and which I would recommend. Synchronous online learning would be things like having class via live web conference (like the now ubiquitous Zoom.) Asynchronous online learning would be...almost anything else, that doesn't require students to all login at the same time. Overall, I am generally in favor of asynchronous online learning as a guiding principle, using synchronous meetings on an as-needed basis to support the asynchronous learning environment.

Why is that, you might ask? A school leader from an independent school in California recently emailed me to ask the same question. Here's part of what he said:

I've noticed over the past couple weeks the majority of private schools in this area start to release plans for distance learning.  Most of these plans involve students going through their schedules virtually.  In other words, if first period is from 8:30-9:15, the kids will attend a ZOOM session or Google Meets session for 45 minutes, and then transition to period 2.  Some schools are abbreviating their schedules a bit, but still having their kids attend 4-5 hours of live instruction via their chromebooks each day.  In watching your videos, you've made a few comments about favoring asynchronous instruction and limiting synchronous instruction.  This tends to be my view as well, but I'm curious if you would be willing to spell out your reasons for this a bit more.  Curious about your thoughts on the type of schedule I outlined above as well.  Finally, if you have any good resources which delve into the synchronous/asynchronous question, I'd be interested as well.
 

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

I definitely have opinions about this! I hope that these opinions are generally grounded in research and reflect promising practices, but this is a case of "pretty-sure-most-of-the-time, but-open-to-revision-as-I-keep-learning, and somewhere-on-the-road-to-sanctification." Here is part of what I emailed back in response:

You’re right; I do generally advocate for asynchronous instruction. The reasoning for this is three-fold:

1. There is a fairly substantial (and growing) body of research that suggests that web-conference (e.g., Zoom) meetings are more psychologically taxing than face-to-face meetings, because of the extra cognitive load of trying to manage the weirdness of the
2. Planning for the majority of teaching to be via synchronous instruction demands that teachers and students have a massive amount of screentime every day, and this leads to an equity problem for some (but certainly not all) students. In the case of schools that have a 1:1 program with Chromebooks or other devices, this is less of a problem, assuming that there is robust internet access at every home. But there are quite a few schools that leave families to their own devices (literally)—which might mean students needing to share a limited number of devices. Bandwidth is an issue for many families as well. Anecdotally, we found this the hard way this past spring, as we don’t have super-fast internet access at home, and with my wife and me and both of our kids all working online at the same time we often found frustration, particularly when it came to uploading files.
3. Beyond the equity question, I’d rather have students doing a variety of different things throughout the day instead of just listening to teachers talk on Zoom. I think of this as the pedagogy question: what do we believe effective pedagogy looks like? If sit-n-get, lecture dominated instruction is the go-to strategy, replacing this with a series of live Zoom meetings makes some sense. But if we view real learning as more than information-transfer…having a variety of tools in the pedagogical toolbox is probably a better strategy. Live meetings can be part of the mix, and I would say the are valuable! But they aren’t the only strategy. I always go back to John Van Dyk’s 60% rule: “No teaching strategy should be used more than 60% of the time or it becomes ineffective.” I think this is true irrespective of whether we’re teaching in a face-to-face classroom or an online classroom.

 
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts on this. I am glad to hear you thinking this through! It’s not easy for school leaders to have to make these decisions, for sure. And when you add to the mix the fact that most teachers have been prepared for, practiced in, and been resourced and equipped for teaching in face-to-face classrooms, the pivot to teaching in an online classroom feels all the more daunting.
 

Blessings to you as you continue to make preparations for the new year!

What do you think? Do you have strong preferences for synchronous or asynchronous online learning? Which do you prefer, and why?

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