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A student takes an asynchronous online History 101 class at his university. Each week, the student listens to his professor’s pre-recorded lectures after work, as well as finishes assignments and quizzes whenever he wishes during the week. Occasionally, he visits his professor’s Zoom office hours, which are not required.
Another student at the same university takes a synchronous online History 101 class taught by the same instructor. This version requires her to attend two-hour class sessions on Zoom twice a week. She is also expected to finish assignments and quizzes prior to these meetings, during which students ask questions and discuss their assignments in small groups.
The only difference between these two classes is that the first is fully asynchronous. Asynchronous courses don’t have specific times when students must attend classes, meetings, or lectures with their professors or fellow students. In turn, this modality often offers more flexibility for assignment completion. Synchronous online courses, on the other hand, have set class meeting times students attend, typically at the same time each week.
Online classes with synchronous meetings (otherwise known as “virtual hybrids”) are, for the most part, a pandemic-driven modality. So, how do students perceive these different modalities, and what are the benefits of asynchronous vs. synchronous coursework?
Students in synchronous online courses sought out and found more social support.
Students may enroll in virtual hybrids as alternatives to in-person courses. A COVID-19-era study from Nguyen et al. surveyed 4,789 undergraduate students across 95 countries about their preferences for either synchronous or asynchronous online learning. Students preferred synchronous online courses, but the majority also took in-person courses when they had the choice (no longer an option for most during the pandemic). The authors suggest, then, students may choose synchronous learning “to mitigate some feelings of isolation.”
Specifically, one of the key differences between synchronous and asynchronous online learning is the latter’s increased number of social interactions, a factor many students appreciate. In a 2020 study, Fabriz, Mendzheritskaya, and Stehle polled 3,056 students and 396 instructors at a large German university about their preferences for synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction. Like in Nguyen et al.’s study, these students were more satisfied by virtual hybrid courses primarily because they valued “the social aspects of teaching and learning (e.g., feedback and interaction),” said the authors.
In response to these studies, post-secondary institutions should recognize students’ need for social support in online courses. Fabriz et al. note that students need to feel both knowledgeable and “socially related” to be successful in their coursework. So, faculty should intentionally build more peer-to-peer and student-to-teacher interactions into their asynchronous coursework.
“Asynchronous methods that facilitate social interaction such as discussions in online forums require more attention as well as a more thorough planning in order to support social interaction compared to for example discussions in video conferences,” said Fabriz et al.
In terms of content-learning (but not methodological skills), students didn’t perceive that they were learning more in either modality.
Though significant differences exist between asynchronous and synchronous online courses, students didn’t report any differences in learning “content-related skill and vocational skills” in either modality. Whereas students reported social skill gains in synchronous online classes, they reported focusing primarily on learning the material in asynchronous courses (Fabriz et al.).
Asynchronous learners also reported more gains in autonomous learning than their peers. However, students’ methodological skills did increase more in online courses with synchronous components.
Interestingly, though students may have learned the same amount of content in both types of course, they were more engaged with what they were learning in synchronous classes. This suggests that “content-related exchange with others supports the evolution of interest for a certain topic” (Fabriz et al.).
Synchronous courses tend to provide more feedback than asynchronous ones.
Fabriz et al. identified three feedback activities that are important in college coursework: peer-to-peer feedback, instructor feedback for students, and student feedback for instructors. All three feedback types contribute to student success.
Virtual hybrid courses provide more of all types of feedback than fully-online courses do, the researchers suggest. Faculty may not even recognize that their synchronous coursework provides more feedback, simply because feedback occurs more organically in synchronous settings and must be more carefully planned in asynchronous settings.
Nguyen et al. also found that synchronous classes promoted active-learning strategies, which include continuous feedback, and increased motivation and engagement.
Students reported improved impressions of usefulness of teaching and teaching tools improved their perceptions of asynchronous courses.
2022 research by Persada et al. from a small sample of 162 synchronous and 147 asynchronous online learning surveys suggests that technological innovations like laboratories in each department, training centers, and mobile apps “can influence students’ perceptions of asynchronous learning.”
In other words, the more access students have to up-to-date technologies, the more likely students are to appreciate their asynchronous online classes.
Teacher characteristics also played a key role in student perceptions of both online education modalities, the researchers say. These characteristics include “self-confidence, positive behavior, facilitation, knowledge sharing, and creativity” and can alter students’ perception of either type of online modality (Persada et al.).
Students Can Decide if Synchronous or Asynchronous Meetings Are Right for Them
Students who take virtual hybrid courses benefit from more social interactions than students who take online courses without synchronous components. Students who appreciate the social interactions of on-campus learning can receive some of the same benefits from synchronous online learning.
If students simply want to learn the course content and don’t need extensive social support, they may be just as satisfied with asynchronous online classes.
Faculty, too, can use this research to develop their synchronous and asynchronous coursework. For instance, asynchronous learning can boost students’ opportunities for social learning by increasing opportunities to engage with others in the course and provide feedback.
These three studies provide insight into the differences between synchronous and asynchronous learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, however, students can choose from more course modalities, including in-person, hybrid, synchronous online, or asynchronous online coursework, meaning they may opt for one course modality over another for different reasons than students did during the pandemic. So, only current research will reveal if students still opt to take synchronous online classes, or if they instead sign up for in-person courses that foster the social engagement they desire.
