By Adriana Rao
The pros
Asynchronous learners are the students that chose to stay virtual, and then chose to work completely independently, meaning that they don’t attend the Zoom meetings for their classes.
Asynchronous students are still counted for attendance, they still do their classwork and turn it in; they just don’t do it while conforming to the bell schedule. In some cases, asynchronous learning can be beneficial because it allows students to work within their schedule, students are still counted for attendance, and it also allows students to contend with uncooperative internet connections.
When the pandemic hit last school year, and students were forced to finish the school year virtually, they worked asynchronously. They worked in their own time, and if they were good with time management, sometimes students would be finished by lunch. When the 2020-2021 school year first began, some students felt that they gleaned the necessary information from the posted Zoom recordings, lesson slideshows, and by whatever extra explanations friends in the same classes shared with them. As the school year continued, these students have stayed asynchronous because they have found it to be beneficial for them. After all, they have time to do things in between assignments or after they finished all of the classwork for the day. Unlike synchronous learners, asynchronous learners can be completely independent, they can jump from class to class as soon as they are finished, instead of having to wait for a Zoom meeting to start or having to stop doing an assignment so they aren’t late logging into class. However, just like synchronous learners, asynchronous learners are still counted for attendance, so long as they log into each class’s Schoology page before 11:59 p.m. on that day.
If a student misses nine or more days a semester, they will not receive credit for that class, meaning that before the semester is over, the student has to take a chunk out of their time and devote it to attendance recovery, however, as long as a student logs into a class’s Schoology page before 11:59 p.m. that day, then that student is counted present for that class that day. Students tend to exploit this because this new rule allows them to have medical appointments, job interviews, auditions, and other events that would otherwise be scheduled on the weekend during the school day. Students don’t even have to complete the work, though if it’s due that day and it isn’t completed and turned in, it might receive late points. Another benefit of asynchronous attendance is that it allows students to work around unstable internet connections.
In this age of technology, almost everyone has internet access and connection, but what most people don’t have is a stable internet connection. When there are more devices connected to the household’s internet, the less stable the connection becomes, which can cause many problems for students who are attending school virtually. Asynchronous learning allows students to work around the unstable internet connections they may have at home because they don’t have to be on the Zoom meetings throughout the day. Asynchronous gives students time to troubleshoot their internet issues without having to worry about being counted absent.
Synchronous learners waste away a day logging into Zoom when they can work in their independent time and still be counted present. Asynchronous learners save themselves time and can fit in other activities to their schedule, that wouldn’t usually be able to. Going completely asynchronous would save students many sleepless nights and stress headaches, which will only allow students to have more time during the wee
The cons
Synchronous learning is the term that is used to refer to the type of virtual learning when a student participates in the Zoom calls and works with the class.
Asynchronous learning is the term that refers to virtual learning in which a student works completely independently, meaning that they don’t participate in the Zoom calls and don’t work with the class. Synchronous students are automatically counted for attendance for each class. They receive one-on-one help from their teachers, and they can interact with their classmates in breakout rooms during class Zoom calls.
Attendance has always been a major requirement to pass classes, especially now because teachers have students both in-person and online, making it harder to keep track of who is present and who is absent. In order to be counted to present for a class, a student must either attend the Zoom meeting for the class, send an email to their teacher that day, or they have to log on to the Schoology page for the class before 11:59 p.m. Asynchronous learners force teachers to take attendance multiple times a day per class, time that teachers could use to grade assignments and/or finish creating and uploading assignments on Schoology. Synchronous learners are not only automatically counted for attendance, but they also have the opportunity to receive one on one help from their teachers.
In years past, when students were in-person every day, they were able to ask their teachers for help on assignments with relative ease. However, this school year, asking a teacher for help isn’t as simple as walking up to their desk and voicing the question. Since asynchronous learners refuse to log on to the Zoom meetings, they can’t unmute their microphones once the general instruction of the class is over and ask their questions. Instead asynchronous learners email their teachers or contact them through Remind with their questions, which takes more time out of a teacher’s day because they then have to devote time to responding to student messages and questions; questions that, nine times out of ten, had been asked by another student and answered in the Zoom meeting. Plus, when students deign to not join the Zoom meetings, they are missing a valuable opportunity to interact with people who aren’t members of their household.
Before the pandemic, human interaction was something that was taken for granted, but now that everyone has been limited to only interacting with their immediate family, most people, especially teens, are craving some type of human interaction with other people, even if it’s only through a screen. Due to pre-existing health conditions or any other of numerous reasons, some students chose to stay virtual once the opportunity to come back to school in-person was possible; some of the students who chose to stay virtual are the students that tend to not attend the Zoom meetings and are completely asynchronous. By being completely asynchronous, these students are denying themselves the chance to interact with their classmates. During Zoom meetings, sometimes teachers will put their students into breakout rooms, which allow the students to speak with each other without the teacher necessarily listening in. Breakout rooms allow students to complete group assignments, assist their classmates with their classwork, and most importantly, interact with each other.
Asynchronous learners waste their teachers’ time because they force them to take attendance multiple times per period, answer questions that were most likely already answered in the Zoom meeting, and deny themselves a chance at human interaction by not attending the Zoom meetings for each of their classes. If virtual students went completely synchronous, it would not only save their teachers countless hours, but it would also help their virtual learning experience in the long-run.