Executive Overview
The debate surrounding online pedagogy has long centered on a false dichotomy: synchronous versus asynchronous instruction. For years, higher education institutions have grappled with how to deliver remote education that is both engaging and accessible. However, a provocative keynote address delivered by Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant at the OLC Innovate conference catalyzed a critical examination of this landscape, asserting that fully asynchronous courses ultimately require synchronous opportunities to truly support student success.
This assertion struck a nerve among educators who have spent careers designing and teaching rigorous, intentional asynchronous programs. For adult learners—who routinely balance demanding careers, childcare, eldercare, and community responsibilities—asynchronous learning is not merely a matter of convenience; it is the primary vehicle that makes continuing education possible.
To move beyond anecdotal assumptions, a practice-based institutional study conducted by faculty researchers at a regional public university in the Midwest investigated the real-world implications of blending synchronous activities into fully asynchronous graduate programs. The findings, later presented at the Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate Conference under the title “Synchronicity in an asynchronous world: What students, instructors, and administrators really think,” illuminate a nuanced truth. Synchronous elements are not universally rejected by stakeholders, but when implemented without deep consideration for student realities, they frequently transform from educational supports into administrative barriers.
This report examines the friction between real-time and flexible learning, evaluates data gathered from students, instructors, and program coordinators, and outlines five core principles for intentional course design. By shifting the central pedagogical question from "Do asynchronous courses need live sessions to succeed?" to "When does synchronous time add value that justifies the disruption to learners?" institutions can foster environments that protect educational access, integrity, and trust.
Detailed Chronology: From Conference Catalyst to Institutional Study
The trajectory of this discourse traces a clear path from a national conference stage to empirical classroom investigation, reflecting a broader industry-wide reckoning regarding post-pandemic online education standards.
March: The OLC Innovate Catalyst
At the OLC Innovate conference, Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant raised a central, provocative thesis: asynchronous courses, despite their structural independence, suffer from a deficit of real-time connection that can compromise student success. For faculty deeply invested in intentional asynchronous design, the claim felt initially dismissive of the high-touch, highly personalized ecosystems educators build across vast divides of time and space. Yet, rather than dismissing the critique, it served as an urgent call to rigorously evaluate the assumptions undergirding modern online graduate education.
Developing the Empirical Inquiry
Prompted by the keynote’s challenge, researchers—including faculty member Dr. Nicole Weber and colleague Corey Davis—embarked on a practice-based institutional study at a regional public university in the Midwest. The objective was clear: rather than debating the theoretical merits of synchronicity from an ivory tower perspective, the researchers sought to capture the direct, lived perceptions of the three primary stakeholders operating within fully asynchronous graduate programs:
- Graduate Students: The primary consumers of the curriculum who navigate the daily balancing act of work, life, and study.
- Online Instructors: The educators tasked with designing learning pathways, facilitating discussions, and evaluating student growth.
- Graduate Program and Certificate Coordinators: The institutional leaders responsible for curriculum coherence, marketing promises, and program integrity.
November: Presenting Findings at OLC Accelerate
The culmination of this research was formally presented at the OLC Accelerate Conference in Orlando, Florida, in a session titled “Synchronicity in an asynchronous world: What students, instructors, and administrators really think” (Weber, Davis, & Vick, 2025). The presentation brought empirical texture to a conversation previously dominated by administrative intuition and faculty preference, providing a structured framework for evaluating the true cost and benefit of live instructional components.
Supporting Context & Metrics: What the Institutional Study Revealed
While acknowledging that the study represents practice-based insights from a specific institutional setting rather than universally generalizable conclusions, the data captures structural tensions currently felt across the higher education sector.
Study Demographics and Response Rates
Conducted at a Midwestern regional public university, the survey utilized a combination of closed- and open-ended questions targeting three distinct cohorts within fully asynchronous graduate programs:
- Graduate Students: $n = 50$ (yielding a 5% response rate)
- Online Instructors: $n = 11$ (yielding a 26% response rate)
- Graduate Program and Certificate Coordinators: $n = 5$ (yielding a 22% response rate)
Despite the modest sample size, the qualitative narrative responses provided rich, granular insights into how mandatory versus optional synchronous requirements impact academic progress, mental health, and institutional trust.
The Conditional Value of Synchronous Activities
Across all stakeholder groups, participants did not reject synchronous activities outright. Both students and faculty identified specific scenarios where real-time interaction yields tangible benefits. These include:
- Immediate Clarification: Moments when complex theoretical concepts require real-time back-and-forth dialogue to resolve confusion.
- Targeted Mentoring: High-touch interactions, orientation sessions, and interactions with specialized guest speakers.
- Collaborative Problem-Solving: Team-based project planning and group milestones that benefit from simultaneous, real-time brainstorming.
However, participants were remarkably consistent in noting that these advantages are entirely conditional. When live sessions are added merely because they "feel" like traditional teaching, they fail to serve the student body.
Where the Model Breaks Down: Three Critical Frictions
The qualitative analysis revealed three primary systemic breakdowns when synchronous requirements intersect with asynchronous program designs:
- Misalignment with Learner Realities: Asynchronous programs are deliberately chosen by adult learners because flexibility is a prerequisite for their education. When programs introduce mandatory live sessions, they inadvertently penalize students managing full-time employment, caregiving obligations, and unpredictable schedules. As one student bluntly stated in the survey: "I chose to complete my education at my time. I do not mind optional events, but mandatory synchronous activities may not be easy for me to attend due to work and family obligations."
- Access and Equity Disparities: Institutions frequently market synchronous events as "optional" to bypass scheduling conflicts. However, the study revealed that optionality does not automatically equate to equity. Time zone discrepancies, unreliable internet connectivity, lack of private workspace, and professional friction can render live sessions inaccessible to broad segments of the student population. An online instructor noted that forcing synchronous elements disproportionately penalizes marginalized or geographically dispersed students, diminishing the core accessibility mission of online learning.
- Questionable Pedagogical Value: A recurring theme among student feedback was the redundancy of mandatory meetings. Many participants observed that synchronous sessions were frequently utilized to deliver content that could easily be disseminated via written announcements, recorded video lectures, or asynchronous discussion boards. A student noted: "Something that can be shared in an email, announcement, or on Canvas does not need to be discussed synchronously."
Official Perspectives & Expert Insights
To contextualize these findings within the broader higher education ecosystem, insights from the study’s researchers and institutional leaders highlight the profound ethical and operational dimensions of modality design.
The "Truth in Advertising" Imperative
Graduate program coordinators interviewed during the study emphasized that integrating synchronous components into asynchronous programs introduces a severe risk of breaching institutional trust. One coordinator framed the issue explicitly as a matter of "truth in advertising."
When a university markets a degree path as a fully flexible, asynchronous option to attract working professionals, prospective students make life-altering financial and personal commitments based on that promise. Introducing unexpected mandatory live meetings later in the curriculum shatters that expectation, turning flexibility into a moving target.
The Illusion of Engagement
Faculty assumptions often conflate visibility with engagement. Instructors trained in traditional face-to-face environments frequently default to synchronous meetings because it mirrors their own lived experience of effective pedagogy. However, experienced asynchronous educators argue that deep engagement does not require physical or temporal co-presence.
As noted by educators immersed in digital spaces, meaningful connection is forged through rigorous, thoughtful interaction with coursework, personalized instructor feedback on written assignments, and vibrant asynchronous community discussions that allow students time for deep reflection before responding. Forcing students onto a screen at a designated hour does not inherently produce higher-order cognitive engagement; rather, it often produces compliance driven by anxiety over participation grades.
Practical Principles for Intentional Course Design
Rather than advising institutions to purge all live interactions from online learning, the study’s findings point toward a framework of intentionality. Educators, instructional designers, and program administrators must evaluate live sessions through five core design principles:
1. Start with Learner Realities
Design decisions must be grounded empirically in the lived experiences of students rather than faculty habit or pedagogical nostalgia. Before scheduling any synchronous component, course creators must ask: Who are our learners? What responsibilities are they balancing? Did our marketing materials promise uncompromised flexibility? What specific burdens might this live requirement impose? Utilizing pre-semester surveys to gauge student availability and constraints should be a standard prerequisite for any live event planning.
2. Reserve Synchronous Time for Irreplaceable Value
Synchronous hours must earn their place in the curriculum. If a learning objective, discussion, or content delivery method can be achieved with equal or greater efficacy asynchronously, the live requirement should be abandoned. Real-time meetings should be strictly reserved for high-value collaborative milestones—such as complex team problem-solving, live critique sessions, or interactive mentoring—that genuinely require simultaneous human presence.
3. Protect Flexibility Through Optionality
In fully asynchronous programs, synchronous opportunities must remain genuinely optional. Students who cannot attend live sessions must never be penalized, either explicitly through grading deductions or implicitly through lost learning opportunities. Robust asynchronous alternatives—such as captioned video recordings, alternative reflection prompts, and asynchronous peer-review pathways—must be engineered as equal-value equivalents.
4. Design for True Access, Not Just Availability
Labeling an event as "optional" does not solve equity gaps. Course designers must account for global time zones, professional shift work, variable internet reliability, and domestic caregiving constraints. Best practices include collecting questions in advance of live sessions, providing fully transcribed and captioned recordings promptly afterward, and maintaining persistent collaborative documents (such as shared digital workspaces) that allow non-attending students to contribute before, during, and after the event.
5. Maintain Radical Transparency Regarding Modality
Modality expectations must be communicated with absolute clarity prior to student enrollment. Programs must explicitly state whether individual courses involve occasional synchronous meetings, optional live workshops, or strictly zero real-time requirements. Maintaining transparency protects institutional integrity and honors the financial and personal investments made by adult learners.
Future Outlook: The Evolving Definition of Student Success
As higher education continues to navigate the post-pandemic digital evolution, the conversation surrounding online course design must mature. The false binary pitting asynchronous independence against synchronous engagement serves neither institutions nor students.
The institutional study presented at OLC Accelerate 2025 demonstrates that while synchronous activities possess undeniable value, their deployment must be treated as a high-stakes design choice rather than an automatic default for quality. True student success in asynchronous programs is not achieved by forcing learners to conform to rigid temporal schedules. Instead, it is achieved by designing rigorous, empathetic, and flexible learning environments that respect the complex realities of adult students.
Ultimately, the most pressing question facing online educators is no longer whether asynchronous courses need synchronous sessions to be legitimate. The definitive question is: When does synchronous time add value that justifies the cost to learners?
By answering this question with disciplined intentionality, higher education institutions can reconcile the demands of community-building with the promise of true educational access.
Reference Citation
Weber, N., Davis, C., & Vick, M. (2025, November). Synchronicity in an asynchronous world: What students, instructors, and administrators really think. Paper presented at the Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate Conference, Orlando, FL.
