Student Perceptions of Asynchronous Versus Synchronous Communication in a Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment

摘要

The modern university must be capable of effectively teaching students who attend class in the traditional sense and those who learn from distant locations via technology. This places new challenges on instructors who design courses to fit within this hybrid environment. One of these challenges is determining how students prefer to communicate with the instructor and with student peers. The available options range from rich synchronous communication media to text-based asynchronous interaction. This paper describes an empirical research project that addresses these questions. A survey was created and administered to 220 undergraduate business students. The results of this survey indicate that students prefer to communicate in-person with the instructor and with student peers by a wide margin over email or the telephone. These results have useful implications to instructors involved in distance education.