Asynchronous

Asynchronous learning offers learners more flexibility to complete their course work in their own time and is students’ preferred delivery method for online programs (Online College Student Report, 2023). It is comprised of resources like lectures, LMS pages, websites, and interactive elements, as well as activities such as discussions, quizzes and assignments.

Students usually have some form of communication with each other, such as a discussion forum, where they can discuss the material and flesh out details they may have not gathered from the materials. When students complete group projects, they have choices to meet synchronously or communicate via email, text, etc.

Instructors can provide virtual office hours or optional synchronous meeting sessions with the class to incorporate some virtual learning elements to an otherwise asynchronous course.

Hybrid

Educational approach where some individuals participate in-person and some participate online. For example, a teacher lecturing in the physical classroom teaching might also be streaming to remote students.

Assignments are structured in a manner that is effective for both face-to-face learning and virtual learning with minimal differences. Some examples of this are as follows:

• When having an in-person class discussion, virtual learners are treated as equals who have comparable opportunities to participate.  
• Virtual and in-person student presentations may require different strategies or have different grading criteria. However, regardless of the presentation’s modality, learning objectives, rigor and grade values are equivalent.

Synchronous/Virtual Instruction

The key distinction of a virtual classroom is that it takes place in a live, synchronous setting, typically over video conferencing software such as Zoom or Teams. Synchronous virtual learning typically requires students to attend regularly scheduled online live-streamed lectures, discussion sessions and/or workshops.

Virtual learning can be, and often is, an important element of online courses. In a live setting, the instructor and students are learning about, collaborating on, or discussing course content. Since virtual instruction happens in real-time, it allows for those sessions to be more responsive to student requests for clarification and permits deviation from the prescribed lesson material.

These sessions are often precursors to, or presentations and discussions of, coursework within the Learning Management System (LMS).

Instructors combine face-to-face interaction with online resources and activities.

This is accomplished by interweaving both in-person synchronous and online asynchronous activities. Blended learning affords the instructor the freedom to select the most appropriate content and modality for the learning objectives and learners’ needs.

For example, in a flipped classroom model, instructors can reserve in-person class time for deeper discussion, presentations, or collaborative work by relegating preparatory readings, grading, feedback and knowledge checks to the Learning Management System (LMS).