Why choose Synchronous Learning?

Synchronous online learning describes when people gather together in the same digital space at the same time. Such gatherings often have a facilitator who is responsible for guiding the group’s process during their meeting.

Why would you choose to use synchronous session in your course?

Supports accessibility for participants

Synchronous online activities allow participants to learn from home, and connect from rural settings, and enable a diverse virtual classroom, potentially with participants from around the world.

Increase teaching and social presence

Synchronous online activities support the development of learning communities through the real time interaction opportunity between facilitator and participants, decreasing participants’ feelings of isolation and allows for timely address of participants’ concerns or questions at the beginning of the course or points throughout.

Versatility

Synchronous online activities can support longer, asynchronous online courses as well as accessibility for hyflex courses.

Opportunities for Immediate Feedback

Synchronous online sessions enable the opportunity for real-time feedback, whether it is formal feedback based on student performance (in a presentation, for example) or informal feedback (in responding to students’ contributions to a discussion, for example).

But for the benefits of synchronous online activities, there are some technical limitations of using synchronous sessions in your course:

• the difficulty of choosing a time for the session(s) that all participants can attend (i.e. time zones, work and family schedules etc.)
• maintaining an accessible environment for all participants