Asynchronous learning

Asynchronous learning is a current development in teaching and learning provision that exploits the affordances of contemporary educational technologies, yet that also links with long-standing interest in the learning advantages of facilitated reflection. From this perspective, asynchronous learning brings education and technology into productive alignment, to the potential benefit of learners and educators alike. At the same time, critiques of asynchronous learning highlight concerns that it is not sufficiently engaging and rigorous for higher education (Reese 2015). Certainly, as with all forms of educational provision, the success of asynchronous learning depends on the active engagement and wholehearted commitment, as well as the sustained self-discipline, of both learners and educators. More broadly, certain critiques reflect the residual assumed primacy of face-to-face, real-time interaction to which some educators still adhere, and that position asynchronous learning as being deficit and deficient. Accordingly, discussions of the effectiveness and utility of asynchronous learning encapsulate wider debates about the interplay between education and technology and the relative influence of each on that interplay.