Synchronous and Asynchronous Approaches to Teaching

Book excerpt: "Blended teaching represents a great opportunity to enhance the entire educational experience. Much has happened in the past two years, and the debate has rapidly increased in both the academia and business landscapes. Shedding light on the latest trends, challenges and practices is a must today. The book addresses these topics brilliantly." -Leonardo Caporarello, Deputy Dean for Lifelong Learning, SDA Bocconi School of Management, Italy. This book examines synchronous and asynchronous teaching in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few weeks, millions of teachers found themselves forced to teach online, often with little systematic preparation and in their own homes. While this mode of teaching was earlier seen to be supplementary to brick-and-mortar classes, online teaching has become pivotal to the classroom experience. The chapter authors write of shared experiences that encapsulate the challenges faced by faculty, students and also higher education institutions. The book covers what worked, what did not work and what had to be changed during the rapid shift to online synchronous and asynchronous teaching during the lockdowns. Comprising both theoretical and practical perspectives, this book provides one of the first authoritative analyses of the field, while gathering lessons to be learned from the pandemic. Payal Kumar is Dean of Research and Management Studies at the Indian School of Hospitality, Delhi, India. Jacob Eisenberg is Associate Professor in the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School at University College Dublin, Ireland.