Online classrooms: to synchronize or not to synchronize?

Reading Salman Khan's book on the virtues of online learning got me thinking about one particular attribute of the education experience (which, after all, is just another form of communication, one which, if Khan is a sign of things to come, will be increasingly mediated): whether or not teaching/learning takes place synchronously or asynchronously.

Khan makes an excellent point about a problem with synchronous classroom teaching: everyone has to move at the same pace, and if you're a bit slower to understand the concept being taught, the class moves on without you. If students were allowed to learn at their own pace, slower students would get a chance to master the material without slowing down the faster students, and everyone would learn more. There might be other benefits to teaching and learning asynchronously. There's the obvious convenience factor: our leisure, work, and social lives are increasingly fragmented, unscheduled, and asynchronous. Each of us has a different schedule. This difference essentially requires every activity, including teaching/learning, to become asynchronous. Khan also makes the point that a teacher waiting for you to give them the right answer, even in a one-on-one tutoring session, creates pressure that can inhibit thinking.

Having had the experience of a class move on before I mastered the material (quite recently, as a matter of fact), I instantly saw the value in Khan's customizable approach. But as much as I am capable of seeing the downside to a classroom that moves at one pace, I wonder if the synchronous approach motivates students who would otherwise not be motivated to learn the material. Customizability sounds good, and from the (straw-man) economists point of view, it is logical to assume that students who know that they must pass the class in order to get a job they like that pays well will try hard to learn the material. The students are accountable for their performance, and they know that they slack off at their own peril. If customizable, asynchronous learning experiences are a better tool for that (which, I would agree with Khan, they are), then it would follow that students would benefit from their use.

Being in a synchronous learning environment does put pressure on some students: the pressure to keep up. When we take that pressure away, how does this affect student motivation? My intuition, after having spent the past couple of years absorbing research on immediate/delayed gratification and self-control, is that even when some students know they should (or even need to) pay attention and try hard when completing coursework, they will be unable to do so without the pressure to keep up. Its not a question of accountability as much as it is a question of motivation.

I'm reminded of students who form study groups. Some criticize the practice as counter-productive: students spend more time distracting one another than holding one another accountable or helping each other learn the material. But I'd wager that for a certain type of student, such groups (which are kind of a self-imposed synchronous learning environment) are far better than trying to study alone. Traditionally, students have been left to find out whether studying on their own or in groups works best for them, but as someone who will likely be teaching an online course in the near future, I'd like to consider ways of identifying the characteristics of students that would benefit from synchronous learning environments and keep things synchronous for those students while having the others learn at their own pace. It would be a hybrid course in terms of synchronicity/asynchronicity.

I have only begun reading Khan's book, so maybe he addresses this issue of motivation in the new asynchronous learning environment later on. The grand MOOC experiment has already begun, and I'd love to get a look at who drops out of the courses and why. Another point on which I agree with Khan: online learning gives us more data on how people learn than we had before, and this could be a great help to those designing better learning environments online and offline.

Asynchronicity

Most of the ideas on this blog come about as the result of some combination of talks, articles, books, events, or conversations to which I've recently been exposed. The most recent combination: a great talk by Nicole Ellison at Michigan's School of Information, a TED talk from Sherry Turkle, and the book Nudge.

The first part of Ellison's talk concerned online dating and deception: when, why, and how much are online daters willing to stretch the truth about themselves in their profiles. In her interviews with several online daters, she found that they often excuse online exaggerations about themselves by saying that it either once was true of themselves (e.g., a person who, when they made their profile, did not smoke but then took up smoking and failed to update his/her profile) or, hopefully, will be true in the future (e.g., a person who anticipates losing a few pounds or getting a slightly better job). This is excusable in the arena of online dating because the dater never knows exactly when he/she will be contacted by another person. You could easily "forget" (or say you forgot) to keep your profile up-to-date and you could easily lose those pounds or get that job by the time Mr./Ms. Right contacts you. Asynchrony (i.e., some lag time between when you put some information about yourself into the world and when you get a reply) is a defining characteristic of the online dating world; norms of deception reflect that.

Turkle was a bit more broad and impressionistic in her analysis of the recent increase in technologically mediated communication, at times indulging in the kind of cynical hand-wringing about "Technology" that, I feel, isn't the most fruitful approach to improving our interactions with technology and with one another. The overlap between the two talks related to asynchrony: Turkle pointed out that many of her interviewees preferred texting to talking face-to-face, and that this was likely due to the amount of control it offered them in terms of what they would say and how they would present themselves.

Early versions of various communication technologies are often asynchronous: think of the postal service, email, and texting. As technology became more advanced, people could engage in synchronous communication: telephone and Skype. But maybe people don't always want the loss of control over one's presentation of self that comes with synchronous communication. Even a small lag of 30 seconds allows the person to have an immediate reaction, think about what the other person wants to hear (or about what will make them react in a way that's desirable), and send that message. Both Ellison and Turkle note that this is a kind of tailored self, likely different than the un-tailored self that cannot help but come across in face-to-face interactions. In Goffman's terms, those who use asynchronous media like Facebook and texting instead of talking face-to-face or on the phone are all front stage and no backstage.

At the same time, people have noted the dangers of impulsive texting, suggesting that people don't take time to consider their initial emotional reaction and merely text or post without considering the consequences. I think this worry may have to do more with the permanence of the message (unlike the impermanence of something said in conversation) and the fact that the person might not consider the context in which the message will be consumed because he/she is not in that context (unlike face-to-face conversations in which folks see, immediately, the consequence of what they're saying). Its also possible that there's simply more conversation going on with asynchronous communication technology than there was without it, particular conversation with certain others (people you care about a lot, and not people you happen to physically be around). The more you converse, the more likely you are to say something impulsive.

There are a few reasons why the extent to which communication is synchronous or asynchronous appeals to me as a research topic. First, its an attribute of a media experience and not a medium or an application. Attributes like temporal proximity, assortment size, or synchrony are like mass or volume: they never change; television and Facebook change all the time, making it hard to know for sure if what applied to them 5 years ago still applies today. Secondly, you can easily measure synchrony: just gauge the average amount of time between posts, texts, emails, etc. Lastly, you can tweak it pretty easily. This brings me to Nudge. The book's premise is that there are many attributes of our choice environments that weren't considered when they were designed. By tweaking them in ways so subtle that most users don't notice or mind (e.g., changing the number of mutual funds a person picks from when investing via an IRA; changing the choices on multiple-choice questions about organ donation) you can profoundly affect what people choose. Email, texting, Tweets, and Facebook posting don't really have much in the way of temporal constraints. What if you introduced some: requiring people to reply within 10 seconds or requiring them not to reply for 1 day? Yes, of course, people would notice these constraints and would likely mind them. But technically, it wouldn't be very hard at all to make these changes. Most of these applications already have artificial constraints (think of Twitter and its 140 character limit). You'd just have to sell users on the benefits of such constraints. 

To return to Turkle's point about control, its not just that these technologies allow users the time to have control over their presentations of self. They also allow them to choose how long to wait: whatever amount best suits your needs. Meanwhile, the person of the other end can feel quite powerless, causing a strain on the relationship. Maybe its not particularly important that sending letters via mail required folks to wait days or weeks before getting replies or that face-to-face requires instant replies (though with mail, one could choose to write back later rather than sooner). Maybe its more important that imposed constraints put the interlocutors on common ground.