What Does Asynchronous Mean?
Asynchronous means that participants are not required to be present at the same time in order to take or participate in the class. For instance, the professor puts materials and assignments online for you to view at a later time. You may send an email to a professor or post a discussion message and others may reply hours later. Asynchronous communication allows those with time or location constraints to work at their convenience. Interaction with the professor and fellow students is still an important part of the class, but the interaction is often asynchronous….via email, a discussion board, etc.
Asynchronous refers to fulfilling course objectives through activities that do not need to take place at the same time for all students. An example of an asynchronous activity is the discussion board or threaded discussion, where students post to the board when it is convenient to them as long as the activity is completed by a pre-determined date. This contrasts to synchronous, which means that the activity takes place at the same time for all students. An example of a synchronous activity is an exam that must be completed by all students in a class during a 3-hour window. Our program is primarily asynchronous.
ASAP uses the term asynchronous to mean that the requests and responses are not synchronized. In a synchronous exchange, the client asks A and the server answers A, client asks B and the server answers B, and so forth. In an asynchronous exchange, the client can ask A, B then C, and the server can answer B, C then A. For an asynchronous exchange to work, the client must have some means for correlating the responses to the requests. The need for asynchronous arises when the server takes a long time to create its responses.
Within semester limits, the DBU Online courses are totally asynchronous which means students may sign on any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Asynchronous learning is learning where the instructor and the students need not be in the same room at the same time, nor need they be on the computer at the same time. Except where the faculty member has established test dates and time, chat reviews, etc., students do not need to log in at the same time as other students or at the same time as the instructor.
