perhaps more contemplative learner may take longer to respond and, thus, not speak up at all. However, in an asynchronous learning environment, with additional time to reflect, his or her insights may be altogether different and his or her willingness to participate significantly enhanced.
In addition, given a digital, asynchronous learning opportunity, the learner is more likely to feel comfortable providing a thoughtful and measured response (Nandi, Hamilton, & Harland, 2012). This is because the student not only has more time to think about the discussion but also to look up information and resources to support his or her perspective. Virtual, asynchronous learning also levels the playing field in terms of participation. In an asynchronous learning space, learners emerge and contribute with no regard to gender, height, voice, ethnicity, or relative vivaciousness. Strategically facilitated, asynchronous learning creates a condition where the quality of one’s ideas becomes the ultimate measuring stick.
Invisible geographical boundaries, increased learner engagement, personalization, and asynchronous learning—these are all significant benefits of DEL that we explore in this book. Of these, asynchronous learning deserves special attention before we dive into the deep end of the DEL pool.
Advantages of Asynchronous Learning
Think about how important ongoing dialogue and thoughtful verbal exchanges are to the learning process. Meaningful dialogue and dialogue-driven learning activities likely power your classroom. It powered you in college when you stayed up all night reflecting on newly formed adult values. Dialogue or communication in one form or another clearly informed Neanderthals as they scrambled to survive the northern latitudes during the cold phases of the Pleistocene Era, or the Ice Age. We are a species that works well when engaging in continuous conversation. It drives our innovations and stimulates natural learning rhythms. Technology, however, has provided us with asynchronous opportunities to communicate that may actually allow us to expand and improve this natural learning propensity.
The Ice Age notwithstanding, does a loud lecture in a room of twenty or two hundred students provide the optimal environment for communication and collaboration? Does sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a room with inconsistent sound levels and visual accessibility truly represent the most superior method of learning? How many times have you listened to a real-time lecture and wished you could ask the speaker to repeat him- or herself? In an asynchronous learning environment, each learner can play a recorded lecture back, read a classmate’s statement several times to consider its meaning, and expand his or her view if the learner missed the message. These things aren’t possible for students steering a classroom blackboard. Let us look at some advantages asynchronous learning offers students.
Asynchronous Learning and the Brain
Our brains require an indeterminate amount of time for a process called consolidation. Consolidation is literally the process of sorting out the utility or meaning behind any new learning experience (Harris, 2014; Steiner, 2009). After engaging in a science experiment, your brain releases the memory of the color of your teacher’s tie because it’s irrelevant. Your brain, however, will revisit and more deeply reflect on the frothy burst of energy you observed when you mixed calcium carbonate with hydrochloric acid.
This process of taking in new information and going through consolidation to sort out the meaningful from the meaningless doesn’t happen for everyone in the same way or in the same time. Some of us need to observe the same phenomenon several times to help us to capture its importance and remember the correct elements of either the process or the outcome (de Jong, 2010).
Furthermore, what’s also interesting about this process is that our brains rely on retrieval to bring forward memories or stored learning elements at times when that learning is relevant. Thus, students with varying speeds of retrieval power drive our classrooms. In traditional, synchronous classrooms, students who are fast retrievers tend to be rewarded. In teacher-centric learning environments, where the teacher moves from respondent to respondent very quickly, without the opportunity to explore answers in depth, will find that students who retrieve information quickly are oftentimes perceived as having superior learning power. Learning theorists have found that this ability to quickly retrieve is no demarcation of intelligence. In fact, slower retrieving students may be calling on a deeper and more comprehensive reservoir of stored, contextual learning before formulating a response (de Jong, 2010).
What does all of this mean for asynchronous digital learning? Asynchronous learning activities allow students to control content intake, listening and observing multiple times or rereading key elements for the sake of understanding. Furthermore, when dialoguing with one another in an asynchronous environment, students who are slow retrievers are given an opportunity to participate in a time frame that is comfortable for them (Magistro et al., 2015). Their reflections may be even deeper than some of their fast-retrieving counterparts and, as a result, their input may be richer and deeper (de Jong, 2010). Despite its digital visage, asynchronous online learning may allow us to learn and engage our brains in a far more natural and organic way than ever before (Harris, 2014; Steiner, 2009). As if these benefits are not enough, it also leads to more thoughtful communication.
Asynchronicity and Thoughtful Communication
One more often-ignored advantage of the asynchronous nature of the DEL environment revolves around the realization that every asynchronous comment hangs in virtual abeyance—waiting for random or directed consumption. This effect is different for an online classroom where there are consequences, than it is for people posting to some random website under anonymous pseudonyms. This is a powerful distinction because whatever documentation or commentary we provide in a digital learning environment must withstand the potential scrutiny of careful observation and analysis.
How many smooth-talking businesspeople and politicians struggle mightily when confronted with a word-for-word transcription of exactly what they said—unable to hide what might be a shallow or misguided message behind their velvet delivery or handsome visage? Learning in a digital environment requires participants to think more carefully about how they contribute, the words they choose, how to formulate their thoughts, and how to respond to others who do the same. If the words we speak face to face in real time were to hang in this virtual abeyance, we’d all probably be more careful about what we say and how we say it. Thus, asynchronous communication with DEL creates the right conditions for superior quality work.
This does not mean toxicity cannot creep in, of course. An important element related to the successful facilitation of distance learning revolves around the prevention and the appropriate response to toxic or inappropriate behaviors online. In an era when the challenges associated with cyberbullying and other attempts to threaten, dominate, and otherwise inhibit learning in a digital learning environment are rising, we will be focusing our attention on strategies that you can implement that will help you avoid these scenarios altogether by creating engaging learning experiences. Intervening when necessary is important; however, just as we have learned in the best examples of face-to-face pedagogy, the best way to avoid a classroom with off-task behaviors is to create an engaging learning environment where students are wrapped up in their work and don’t have time to throw spitballs, cyber or otherwise.
Given online, asynchronous approaches’ advantages, we believe the best modality for learning is one that strives to achieve balance or a blend between traditional (synchronous) and online (asynchronous) learning modalities.
Blended Asynchronicity
Blending both asynchronous and synchronous modalities gives students the opportunity to directly interact with the facilitator, ask questions, and develop a greater sense of connection to the facilitator, other students, and the content. The classroom’s cyber-asynchronous components enable learners to work at their own pace, and eliminate time and work condition constraints that cyber-synchronous components demand (Ge, 2012).
Is it all exactly this simple? No. It
