Surprise! Be Prepared For Anything in a Synchronous Environment
By Jennifer Hofmann

Recently, I taught a 13-week online course at the Walden Institute of Leadership and Learning. The experience was full of surprises. For one thing, the students (all adult professionals in the training field) were prodigious in the amount of work they produced. For another, the class took on a life of its own--students provided each other an enormous amount of feedback and created discussion groups on topics outside the course requirements.

Perhaps the most outstanding moment happened towards the end of the program. An online chat had been scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Eastern (noting time zones becomes second nature when your learners range from Alaska to New Zealand), and the instructor--me--failed to show up. It had snowed that night and I had car trouble to boot. By the time I made it home, I'd forgotten all about the chat. About 10:00 p.m., I received a call from one of the students who informed me that the class had stayed in the chat room even though I wasn't there. They explored the assigned topic, made decisions about the current topic, posted results for the students that didn't participate, and assigned one of the students to contact me to make sure I was all right.

I couldn't recall any similar courtesies by students in my college days or corporate training courses I'd been involved in. Typically, if the instructor didn't show up after 10 minutes, students went home. Was this a fluke? I decided to find out.

Gwen Hillesheim, assistant vice president for university outreach and academic initiatives at Walden University, told me she was equally surprised by the creativity of her online learners. For example, one online student--explaining that the class needed a coffee shop--created a virtual coffee klatch. She polled fellow learners on their favorite coffee flavors and mailed them small packets of their favorites. The group then began to share favorite food recipes to go with the coffee, both before and after class and on asynchronous chat boards. Eventually, Walden University picked up on the idea and sent Walden coffee mugs to the students. At a designated time each week, they would gather online, drink coffee, and chat--and become friends offline as well as online.

Mary Jo Robinson, an instructional specialist with the American Bankers Association, says she is surprised at the broader level of participation in online learning settings. "What I find the most exciting about it is that more people participate, something that doesn't happen in a face-to-face classroom environment." Robinson also notes that when someone in an online class asks a question, all she needs to do is wait and one or more of the participants will answer. The ensuing dialogue raises many more nuances than a straight back-and-forth with the instructor, and students benefit from the interaction, she says.

Trainer Petr Dejmek recalls how some students embraced synchronous learning and lobbied to include synchronous components in Web-based programs. "We run several distance education courses with different teachers and different pedagogies, but with overlapping students," he says. "All but one teacher uses weekly synchronous audio meetings--and that teacher was persuaded by students to adopt a live weekly meeting." Learners who had PC problems would drive to friends' homes to make sure they could participate in the meetings, he adds. This emphasized the need some individuals have for live interaction--especially when the bulk of the learning environment is asynchronous.

Tom Nickel, of Utah State University, used synchronous technologies to solve a personal time issue. For one online class, he scheduled a voice chat that included a guest presenter who would be interviewed by the class. After the interview, the class would break into groups and accomplish some tasks based on the content of the interview.

However, a last-minute consulting task came up that took Tom across the country. He worked with his clients to ensure that he could get access to the Net during the hour he needed, and at the appropriate time he excused himself from a meeting and moderated the chat from his clients' location. Says Tom, "The people I had come to meet with were so intrigued that the whole group adjourned to observe the session." The lesson from this story? Live classes taught using the Internet allow quite a bit of flexibility as far as location is concerned. In the long run, this could mean better attendance and increased participation compared to traditional "brick and mortar" classroom situations.

I've also heard about some unpleasant surprises, many having to do with time-zone problems. Lucia Worthington, located in Victoria, British Columbia, had a regular class meeting with learners located in Malta, England, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada. She told students that the chats would be scheduled on "Victoria time," and students would need to calculate the time zone on their own. The student from England kept missing chats, though he insisted he was in the chat room at the designated time. The riddle was solved with the realization that he was logging in on Victoria time--Victoria, Hong Kong, that is. He was out-of-synch by precisely 14 hours! In the world of synchronous learning, you can never be too careful in specifying where and when.

As more organizations adopt the tools, the synchronous medium will bring many changes to traditional instruction. Managing classes that include learners from different cultures, languages, and time zones will start to become second nature to instructors. Just as many people cannot imagine life before ATM machines, our global community will marvel that we taught in such restricted silos.

Published: May 2000