Re: definition of "asynchronous" on-line course delivery

On 28 Apr 2000, Lori K. Harris-Ransom <harrisransom[_at_]email.msn.com> wrote:
>
> the copyright office seems to make the distinction between
> asynchronous and synchronous based on whether there is a definate
> timeframe for completing the course; the more indefinate the
> timeframe, then the more the course looks to be asynchronous.
>
> more thoughts?

I spent some time last year interviewing folks doing distance education for degree as well as non-degree instruction in Michigan. Multiple modes are possible.

If the following is what the Copyright Office really believes, it is NOT valid. They are confusing two completely different dimensions of distance education modes:

1. Whether the class involves real-time lectures or events, versus being asynchronous
2. Whether the class has a defined starting (enrollment) date and a definite ending (completion, final grading) date, versus allowing the student to pick the enrollment and completion dates and times.

A class could have a defined starting and ending period and either have real-time lectures or on-your-own convenience course materials. At Michigan State, paper-based self-paced Physics classes were offered back in the 1970s. Now those same classes are taught via the Web. A student still must enroll during a specific semester, but consumes content within that semester at his or her own pace.

Asynchronous classes are susceptible to having their own time of enrollment and of completion, at the convenience of the students, but that may or may not lead the institution offering the class to deliver it that way. Skills-based, as opposed to degree-based, classes are probably more likely to be offered in this manner. An employee needs to pick up a specific skill and starts and ends the training experience just-in-time.

Someone said that "real time to me implies lectures in real time with interactivity." That, too, is mixing two very separate dimensions of instruction. A real time lecture need not offer ANY interactivity. Most folks who went to large universities have experienced large real time face-to-face lectures where the professor took no questions. A real time distance education lecture might be delivered by one-way satellite with no feedback channel at all. Or the class might provide for interaction by telephone at the end of the lecture. Or local discussion groups might pick up when the lecture ends. Or students might discuss the lecture in asynchronous forums. But real time by itself does NOT necessarily imply interactive.

Conversely, course material might be delivered asynchronously with asynchronous student-to-student and instructor participation; such discussion is fully interactive but it is not real time.

By the way, given today's bandwidth and video delivery options, many instructors new to distance education launch into real time as a main component, then quickly realize they are defeating the goal of letting students consume content at a place and time of their convenience. The instructor may move from forcing real-time participation (tuning into a real time lecture, joining a chat room) to asynchronous (playing back a lecture or following Web-based content, discussing the material in an asynchronous forum). Student may still need to follow a schedule: e.g., they may need to view an online lecture within the next 48 hours. Thus the content isn't delivered to all students in real time per se, but the lecture was prepared in real time for that 48 hour period during the current semester.

I'm afraid trying to explain today's panoply of distance education paradigm choices in terms of 1950s paper mail correspondence courses as a sort of binary test is a pretty shallow analysis.

/rich

Rich Wiggins
<wiggins[_at_]msuvm3.cl.msu.edu> Received on Mon May 01 2000 - 16:17:45 GMT