Answer Geek

Answer Geek

Answer geeks (and we use that term with great respect): Where would we be without them? They help guide us through the challenges of online learning, the Internet, courseware development, and those other intersections of learning and technology.

QUESTION

Is there research demonstrating a difference between learning achieved through synchronous versus asynchronous online instruction?

ANSWER

I haven’t seen any research demonstrating an identifiable difference in retention rates or other objective measures. A friend did her doctoral research several years ago on content delivery preferences of medical doctors and found no significant difference between methods. Retention rates for asynchronous and synchronous courses were very similar, and the doctors were willing to learn any way the content was presented as long as the information was useful and relevant to their medical practices.

The real differences may lie in subjective measures, like learner or trainer preferences. Some learners may feel more comfortable in the synchronous classroom with an expert or facilitator leading the course, similar to a traditional classroom, rather than in the self-study asynchronous environment. Also, in these lean economic times, employees may be concerned about spending time on an activity that doesn’t seem to immediately affect business results. They may feel that managers frown on time spend in asynchronous but not synchronous learning, as synchronous events are scheduled, planned activities that might seem to carry more weight.

In addition, synchronous e-learning requires less physical course design and content creation for trainers or instructional designers. For asynchronous e-learning, reproducing all of the information in the head of the trainer or subject matter expert, in a manner that’s engaging for a self-study learner, can be hard work. Synchronous e-learning eliminates part of the work by putting the trainer or subject matter expert back into the picture. (However, new skills may be required of him or her. See “An Instructors’ Guide to Live E-Learning,”
“Making Synchronous Training a Success,” and “Super Synchronous SMEs.”

Several good resources for comparing asynchronous and synchronous e-learning
and choosing between them are

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s decision matrix; http://www.opm.gov/hrd/lead/ltrc/showcase.html
Click2Learn’s whitepaper on delivery methods; http://www.nedc.nrcs.usda.gov/pdf%20files/blended_learning.pdf
Learning Circuits’s article, “Matching Content to Delivery? Remember the Basics!”

An inevitable question is, What about cost? I haven’t seen anyone offering cost comparisons of synchronous and asynchronous learning. The most important question in designing a course should be, Which delivery method is best suited for the learners and the content?

More on synchronous learning

“Synchronous Exercises From Scratch”
“ISD for Live E-Learning”
“Designing for a Synchronous Learning Session”
“Key Factors in Synchronous Delivery”