Asynchronous online learning is individually oriented learning and is not as effective for learning as it lacks the sociability of synchronous online interaction.
An essential challenge is to critcally study the benefits and limitations of emerging types of asynchronous, synchronous, and hybrid [blended] e-learning. This will facilitate understanding of the complex task ahead - taking avantage of emerging media in ways that benefit learning (Hrastiski, 2008).
The following table, which is cut in half as it is too wide, was compiled by Hrastinski and shows when, why and how to use synchronous and asynchronous e-learning:
As this discussion has shown, when it comes to choosing an e-learning style, it is not about 'either/or'. There are times when it is most useful to use synchronous modes and times when it is best to use asynchronous modes of e-learning. I completely agree with Stephen when he wrote this in his final post: the focus of our research, practice and debate should not be which is better out of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning, but how do we design and deliver more effective e-learning so that student achievement is enhanced.
As the discussion comes to a close, a recurring theme has presented itself to me: what we do with learning resources is the key. This, I believe, is supported by both anecdotal evidence and broader educational research.
I have been particularly challenged by the work of John Hattie. When talking about improvements in student learning – which is, of course, what we should be focused on – Hattie (2003) concludes, ‘[t]hat which makes the difference is clear – it is the person who gently closes the classroom door and performs the teaching act’ (p.9). While the students themselves make the greatest impact on their learning (see the above pie-chart), the teaching is the aspect that we can actually have some control over.
When working with exciting new innovations in technology or newly developed curriculum, we can sometimes lose focus on what is our actual task. It is my contention that ICTs need to serve student learning. I have to confess that, at times, using an exciting technology in the classroom has been the primary reason for developing a learning activity, rather than thinking carefully about how the technology will enhance the learning experience of the students. Lang (2010), completed a study which focused on “276 high school students' participation and interaction in a project-based learning environment...mediated by an asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) tool.” The results of this study suggested rather emphatically that the CMC tool did not adequately challenge students or provide a context for them to engage in high-order thinking. The CMC tool was an effective platform for students’ “comparing and sharing information” which comprised 82.7% of their notes. However, “the discovery and exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas, concepts or statements” made up just 13.5% of their note-taking. And, disappointingly, “negotiation of meaning/co-construction of knowledge” was only evident in 3.7% of the notes.
So, what is the conclusion? Should we not utilise ICTs in education? Well, of course not. What it highlights to me is that: a) ICT education developers need to think carefully about what constitutes good learning when constructing e-learning programs and environments and; b) teachers need to become more adept at using these ICTs in the classroom.
Judd et. al (2010) have also conducted research which highlights the fact that quality teaching is primary to the technological tool itself. They write, “Wikis are widely promoted as ‘collaborative tools’, yet this and other research indicates that while aspects of their functionality can support collaboration, their success or failure strongly depends on the way in which individual activities are designed and implemented” (emphasis mine). A similar view is affirmed by Dell et. al (2010) whose research findings suggest that “methods of instruction are more important than the delivery platform” in regards to student achievement.
All this leads me to conclude that the focus of our research, practice and debate should not be which is better out of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning, but how do we design and deliver more effective e-learning so that student achievement is enhanced? So finally, when thinking about our priorities in educational policies and planning, in the words of John Hattie (2003), “We need to ensure that the influence of teachers is optimised to have powerful and sensationally positive effects on the learner. We need to direct attention at higher quality teaching”. This is fundamental both in regards to e-learning and face-to-face instruction.
Thank you all for your thoughtful contributions, links and prompts along the way during this discussion. I hope we have all found this experience an enriching one, prompting us to become better educators.
In my last post I discussed three limitations of synchronous e-learning. In this post I look at three of the main benefits: community, communication and psychological arousal. Community: Research has found that if teachers and students rely on asynchronous e-learning, students may feel isolated and not part of a community - which is ‘essential for collaboration and learning’ (Hrastinski, 2008). Synchronous e-learning does not suffer from these limitations. As synchronous e-learning more closely resembles face-to-face learning, students feel part of a learning community. Synchronous sessions help e-learners feel like participants rather than isolates: ‘Isolation can be overcome by more continued contact, particularly synchronously, and by becoming aware of themselves as members of a community rather than as isolated individuals communicating with the computer.’ (Hrastinski, 2008)
Supports other types of communication: There are three types of communication which are important for building and sustaining e-learning communities: contentrelated, planning of tasks and social support (Haythornthwaite in Hrastinski, 2008). Both synchronous and asynchronous e-learning provide avenues for content related communication and planning of tasks though synchronous e-learning far surpasses asynchronous e-learning when it comes to social support. Social support is vitally important as it creates an atmosphere of collaborative learning and increases psychological arousal (more on this later).
The importance of social support was evident in an examination of synchronous interactions in military training sessions. Researchers found that the pattern of communication was similar to a corresponding face-to-face course: on task (55%), social (30%), or technology related (15%). ‘The researchers argued that clear patterns of collaborative interaction occurred in a synchronous problem solving context. They also contended that social interactions had a positive impact on the group problem-solving behaviours’ (Park, 2007).
It could be argued that an increase in social communication could have negatives impacts, with participants focusing on quantity rather than quality (outlined in a previous post). To overcome this, Bonk and Reynolds (1997) suggest assigning different roles to each student to keep them on task. Three examples include: a starter who begins the discussion, a wrapper who summarises the discussion, and a debater who offers the pros and cons about the given topic (Park, 1997). Social support is clearly evident in the group Skype sessions for this subject, particularly at the beginning and end of the session. Questions are asked between participants that are not content related. The benefits of social support in these types of synchronous interactions are immense. One of the key benefits is that there is an increase in psychological arousal (motivation) amongst participants.
Psychological arousal: The ability to communicate in real-time, get immediate responses and, in some cases, observe facial expressions and body language (through video conferencing) contributes to psychological arousal. In asynchronous interactions however, these elements are suppressed and can lead to disengagement and a decrease in psychological arousal (Hrastinski, 2008).
Research has shed some light on the influence of the ‘psychological elements’ on e-learning students’ learning and motivation. Psychological arousal, as a result of social support, not only enhances the cognitive learning, but also creates a social climate which increases interactivity among participants (Park, 2007). The interactivity between participants is a key element of synchronous e-learning. Participants know they will get an immediate reposnse so they are more motivated to send and read messages. Learners respond quickly so as not to disrupt the conversation. Hrastinski argues that learners do this because they are more psychologically aroused.
In my last post I will summarise the main ideas of my side of the discussion.
As this blog discussion has progressed, some of us may have been asking of ourselves: what exactly is the point of e-learning? It may seem at times that online learning merely, as Micah put it, ‘imitates a classroom’. To me, the word ‘imitation’ carries negative connotations. For example, the richness of real vanilla beans can never be substituted for by imitation vanilla essence. There is something egalitarian, perhaps, about imitation (it is much cheaper) but something very important is lost.
This sentiment is expressed by Leunig as a loss of soul that has occurred in new forms of online communication. Danny Katz provides his own satirical take on the loss of real human interaction through digital communication in his article titled, The Lost Art of Mouth Talking.
Now, popular culture's voracious apetitite for thrill and gimmick over skill and substance (think 20/20 v test cricket or Hollywood v Cannes) may suggest that our use of technology in the classroom acts as little more than a "powerplay" in our already exciting and engaging lessons. But my intuition tells me such a cynical view is not quite the case.
All this gets me wondering: what is it that asynchronous e-learning has to offer us as learners and educators? what makes it more than mere imitation?
Hrastinski (2008) suggests the following occasions for when asynchronous e-learning should be utilised: 1) reflecting on complex issues; 2) when synchronous meetings cannot be scheduled because of other commitments. Essentially, Hrastinski sees that asynchronous e-learning offers us a flexibility which allows for greater 'cognitive participation'. Or, using the language of constructivism that has been running through our discussion, asynchronous e-learning increases our opportunity for cognitive constructvism.
I think about my senior classes where a lot of discussion is had. In history, we talk about issues of justice, non-violence, change etc. in relation to slavery and civil rights in the United States. In ethics, we talk about euthanasia or bioethics and the many factors involved in developing an ethical stance. In many ways, it would be far better to have these discussions in an asynchronous environment such as a blog to allow a greater number of students time to reflect and then offer thoughtful, considered responses. The reality is that, in the classroom, there are fewer students who contribute to these important discussions. I am sure that both time to think and greater confidence when hidden behind a screen and keyboard would increase the number of students willing to participate.
It is for this reason that Lado believes that 'asynchronous learning gives e-learning much of its appeal'. He writes that, 'learners can engage each other when it is most convenient and a knowledge trail is left of discussions...[so] students that are trailing behind in course work still receive the benefit of being able to read discussion posts.'
The problem with synchronous e-learning is that all it really does is imitate the actual classroom. Asynchronous e-learning, however, provides a new, richerand more just learning experience for students. Asynchronous technologies have provided for truly innovative approaches to education rather than mere gimmicks.
The next two posts will outline some of the important contentious issues with synchronous e-learning and a few of the main benefits. After reading these posts, I hope you are better able to make an informed decision about whether the benefits out-weigh the negatives and whether to use synchronous e-learning in your classroom.
Studies that have tried to determine which e-learning style is ‘better’ (synchronous or asynchronous) have generally yielded ‘no significant differences’. Thus, it is more important to work out when, why and how to use different types of e-learning (Hrastinski, 2008). It is also important to remember that users determine how they will use each medium, so often the differences between synchronous and asynchronous e-learning is negligible. Nonetheless, it is worth looking at the positives and negatives of each to determine which style is better suited to how you like to learn and how your students learn.
I have broken down the limitations regarding synchronous e-learning into three main components: problems with technology, lack of flexibility, no time to think/reflect (quantity rather than quality).
Technology:
Anyone who has been involved in a Skype chat session will be aware of the problems thatcan arise: difficulty hearing, people talking over each other, line ‘dropping out’, background noise, etc. These tend to lead to halted conversations and participant frustrations (perhaps leading to a keyboard through the monitor...). It is often difficult to continue a conversation for more than five minutes. I am sure that everyone could tell similar stories about technology problems in their schools and classrooms. I lost count of the times a student ‘forgot their password’ or the system was down. Without the proper technological structures in place, e-learning – and in particular synchronous e-learning – is nearly an impossible task.
Furthermore, the advance of e-learning in developed countries inevitably increases the ‘digital divide’ which is already so apparent. The growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), globalization and the digital divide likewise, have together put new pressures on developing countries to accelerate their development to meet these demands (Paul T. Nleya, 2009). This puts further pressure on struggling economies and educational systems.
Lack of flexibility:
One of the major benefits of e-learning is that it allows for flexible study. You can fit study around your other responsibilities and just jump online when it best suits. E-learning has made distance education possible. For example, Open Universities Australia allows students to ‘study online and graduate with a degree from a leading Australian University. With over 90 courses & 1000 units to study, there's something for everyone’. The problem with synchronous e-learning is that it is not ‘open’ in the sense that you can do it whenever you want. As I wrote in a previous post, synchronous e-learning imitates a classroom, connecting people via streaming audio, video or text through a chat room. The difference between this and regular study is that instead of going to class, the class comes to you via your computer.
No time to think/reflect, quantity rather than quality:
The time taken to reflect and think before responding to a statement or question is severely limited in a synchronous e-learning environment. In his research, Stefan Hrastinski found that in an asynchronous e-learning environment a person’s ability to process information is greatly increased. A receiver has more time to comprehend a message because an immediate response is not required. Therefore, people have time to find some more facts and do some research. Conversely, in a synchronous e-learning community, the focus is often on quantity rather than quality. Participants often write something down quickly before someone else writes a similar thing. Synchronous tools definitely enable communication, though communication does not necessarily mean that participants stay on task.
This idea of quantity rather than quality is expressed by Yun Jeong Park and Curtis J. Bonk (2007) who has found that some researchers have expressed concerns or are openly hesitant about available synchronous tools and choice options: for instance, Marjanonic (1999, p. 131) stated that “…the majority of synchronous collaborative tools enable communication (such as textbased chat systems or video teleconferencing) rather than... collaboration.”
These are just a few of the limitations of synchronous e-learning, though research suggests that the benefits of synchronous e-learning far outweigh the negatives. I will be looking at some of the benefits in my next post.
Micah has written about the link between synchronous e-learning and constructivism. In my last post, I suggested that educators need to create structures which ensure that asynchronous learning adheres to social constructivism. In this post, I’d like to define more clearly social constructivism and discuss how it relates to the construction or design of e-learning.
Ernest suggests that social constructivism ‘posits that human agreement is the ultimate arbiter of what counts as justified knowledge.’ So then, social constructivism goes beyond mere cognitive constructivism in the sense that new knowledge is created and agreed upon by the community. So perhaps we can consider again Micah’s comment on the object sorting activity in his last post where he suggests that ‘students not only work with their peers, they also listen and learn from them’. Do the students agree upon the new knowledge? Implicitly, they probably do. But, to what extent does the facilitator need to ask questions that help students come to agreement on new, constructed knowledge? My guess is that agreement on new knowledge – with some level of sophistication – is more likely to happen naturally as students get older, though it cannot be a given.
Let me use blogging as an example. Students in my History class may each write their own blogs about particular historical issues (let’s say social life in Nazi Germany). Students may read each other’s blogs and find themselves thinking about new ideas. Indeed, they may even leave comments and influence each other’s thinking through debate. But have they agreed upon new knowledge?
My intuition tells me that: 1) students almost certainly construct their own new knowledge; 2) will often, implicitly, agree upon this new knowledge; 3) will rarely reflect that they have, together, constructed new knowledge without the guidance of an educator.
This guidance could manifest in a variety of ways. It may be through carefully structured questions, or it could be through careful development of learning activity guidelines and it should involve careful consideration of how the technology can be used to gain the desired results. Muniz-Solariand Coats (2009)put this another way, suggesting that a ‘system framework, an e-learning “ecosystem,” must be developed that specifies the learning system architecture for pedagogical development’ and that this “ecosystem” ‘must allow flexible, learner-centered education’.
Furthermore, Matt Rota writes that ‘highly effective asynchronous eLearning begins with understanding the roles that fall into the realm of the eLearning instructional design process’. Thus it would seem that the role of the educator is paramount to ensuring effective learning takes place in an asynchronous environment. Indeed, it would appear that constructivism does not have a ‘mind of its own’ but needs to be expertly manipulated.
Increasingly, it seems to me that a truly rich learning experience online will require a combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities. Certainly, I’m not convinced that asynchronous learning on its own provides enough opportunities to allow for shared, agreed upon, newly-constructed knowledge. Muniz-Solariand Coats (2009) affirm this when they write: ‘A need exists to incorporate real-time synchronous technologies for text, visual, and audio communication.’ Specifically, in relation to the “togetherness” of the learning experience, it may be argued that synchronous technologies work to enhance students’ sense of belonging to what may actually be deemed as a learning community (McInnerney & Roberts, 2004).
I wonder what the experiences of others have been in relation to e-learning and social constructivism. Have you found that synchronous technologies have contributed to a sense of community – learning from and with each other?
In previous posts, I wrote about synchronous e-learning and its links with constructivism and postmodern educational theories. I believe that the theory of constructivism is inherent in a synchronous e-learning environment, but I realise it is important to see these theories in practice. It is also important to use a range of technologies and resources to cater for different learning styles. So, I have picked out a couple of short YouTube clips: the first gives a visual overview of constructivism and the second is an example of a constructivist activity in a primary school class. Through these clips we should see the strength of the relationship between constructivism and synchronous e-learning.
The first clip gives a brief overview of constructivism. The clip makes it clear that constructivism is about the teacher and students working together to construct new ideas, knowledge and understanding.
I hope you can see how this also has links with postmodern theories of education. In a previous post I described how the interaction between a teacher and student, in postmodernism, should be seen as a conversation – that is – the teacher and students working together.
The second YouTube clip is an example of a constructivist activity in a primary classroom. Students are given shapes of various colours, shapes, sizes and textures that groups of students will sort. Every time a student uses a word relating to the characteristics of the objects, the teacher writes the word in the ‘yes’ column.
How is this activity constructivist? Through this activity, students will transform their prior knowledge about the properties of objects into new knowledge – they are constructing knowledge. Students not only work with their peers, they also listen and learn from them. The teacher acts as a facilitator of the discussion.
What is the relationship between this activity and synchronous e-learning? Can anyone think of a simple synchronous e-learning activity (which utilises computer/www2.0 technology) that uses similar theories/ideas to the activity in the clip? (I will post my own learning activity as a comment to this post).
Accounts of postmodernism abound today in the literature of both general philosophy and educational theory. As a general cultural phenomenon, postmodernism has such features as the challenging of convention, the mixing of styles, tolerance of ambiguity, emphasis on diversity, acceptance (indeed celebration) of innovation and change, and stress on the constructedness of reality (Beck, 1993).
A postmodern pedagogy can be seen in a synchronous e-learning community. In postmodern thought, we (teacher and student) are involved in an interactive process of knowledge creation and are developing a ‘working understanding’ of reality and life. By drawing broader connections between phenomena (Vygotsky’s notion of interaction) and the exploration of their value implication, learning comes alive. These ideas are inherent in constructivism and a sociocultural theory of education and are inextricably linked with synchronous learning environments (refer to my last post for a more detailed discussion on constructivism). Through synchronous e-learning, students are able to interact with peers and teacher, challenge their pre-conceived notions of phenomena and seek immediate responses.
The interaction between the teacher and student (expert and non-expert) is often best seen as a ‘conversation’ in which there is mutual influence rather than simple transmission from one to the other. Clive Beck gives a summary of teacher-student interaction in a postmodern context when he writes:
We must think increasingly in terms of “teachers and students learning together,” rather than the one telling the other how to live in a “top-down” manner. This is necessary both so that the values and interests of students are taken into account, and so that the wealth of their everyday experience is made available to fellow students and to the teacher.
(Stephen made a very similar point in his last post, when he wrote that ‘engagement with the other [is] a vital aspect of the learning experience’).
There are direct links that can be made between postmodern education philosophy and computer and web-based technologies. Jean-Francois Lyotard has pointed out the extent to which students today can learn from computerised data banks, which he calls ‘the Encyclopaedia of tomorrow.’ Teachers must help students learn how to learn, using such technology. In a synchronous e-learning community, students construct knowledge in two ways: with the help of the ‘Encyclopaedia of today’ and through interaction with other members of the community. The collaborative nature of synchronous e-learning means that students are actively involved in determining what they learn and why, and thus are able to give expression to their distinctive interests and needs.
I realise that my last few posts have been heavy on theory without many practical examples. In my next post, I will use a couple of youtube clips which show the theories I have been discussing (constructivism and postmodernism) in practice.
