5/122.5.1.3 Time-Independent Communication
The controversial topic of whether communication should be asynchronous or synchronous has already been discussed in Section 2.4.2. Harasim definitely favours the asynchronous approach, and I will present some of her arguments in this section.A virtual school is open 24 hours, and is not restricted to only a few of hours per a week. allowing students to interact at any time. Even if the Virtual University is on the other side of the world, time zones will not cause problems.
Asynchronicity gives students the control of speed of interaction. They have an opportunity to re-read articles as well as skipping some which they are already familiar with. They don't have to answer questions immediately but have time to reflect and to consult references or additional information resources. This fact is supposed to increase learning effectiveness [Hil86].
Another advantage of the asynchronous approach is that learners do not depend on the lecturer's pace, and, of course, not on the time of the lecture. Besides, learners do not have to compete for air-time like in face-to-face, audio or video conferences, where timid students often do not have the chance to express their ideas.
There are, as mentioned in Section 2.4.2, also drawbacks to asynchronous communication. One cannot feel the presence of colleagues. When there is no chance to meet peers physically, there should at least be the opportunity to communicate synchronously. As global and local networks improve, audio and even video conferences will become more feasible which from the social point of view, helps students to get to know each other, thus enhancing collaboration.
In my opinion, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication would be the optimal solution. There should be online lectures which can be attended synchronously but they should also be recorded (Authoring on the fly [LM95]), and, therefore, accessible for asynchronous use. Students should be able to communicate and collaborate synchronously with peers using chat tools if they want, but also asynchronously using email, Usenet news groups or by annotating HTML documents [Mos97]. This topic will be discussed later in my thesis.