Preparing for Synchronous Sessions

There are many reasons why people choose to facilitate synchronously online. Some of these are:

• accessibility for participants (allowing them to learn from home, connect from rural settings, etc.)
• real time interaction opportunity between facilitator and participants
• promote participants' active learning
• enable a diverse virtual classroom, potentially with participants from around the world

And of course, sometimes we have no other choice, such as what we are experiencing right now in this pandemic!

People might also choose to schedule some synchronous online sessions within longer, asynchronous online courses. We can do this to:

• drive discussions deeper around course topics
• build course community among participants and facilitator(s)
• decrease participants' feelings of isolation
• address participants' concerns or questions at the beginning of the course or points throughout

Potential limitations

Even though there are many benefits to holding synchronous online learning events, we also have to be aware of the potential limitations.

Limitations could include:

• the difficulty of choosing a time for the session(s) that all participants can attend (i.e. time zones, work and family schedules etc.)
• the contradiction between what participants have potentially signed up for (e.g. participants who choose to learn online for its asynchronous benefits and flexibility) and the planning of accompanying synchronous events which must be attended at a certain time and day
• maintaining an accessible environment for all participants

We also need to consider that our participants might not have a private space in their home or office from which to connect to synchronous online learning and this might impact issues such as experience sharing, confidentiality and even participant safety.

The next page asks you to think more about these and further considerations when choosing your session's mode of learning.