We are light-years beyond the initial pandemic shift into asynchronous learning in higher education, but we are still trying to identify the trends that work, weed out a few that didn’t and select the best ones to keep for years to come.
Now, all eyes are on higher education’s integration of bisynchronous learning, which combines some on-screen, real-time learning between students and the educator with an asynchronous component. This includes working through modules, watching videos, engaging in chat boards and other activities the professor has determined — on students’ own time.
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Laura Pohopien, adjunct professor in the College of Business Administration at Cal Poly Pomona, participated in pedagogy training on the topic and teaches bisynchronous classes.
“A lot of us were calling it ‘hybrid’ before the pandemic,” she says, but the significant difference is that bisynchronous has “no human contact or conversations at all.”
To complicate the matter further, some educators are engaging in HyFlex learning, sometimes confused with bisynchronous.
“Bisynchronous is very similar to HyFlex, just without the face-to-face requirement and possibly without student flexibility. But the principles and guidelines associated with teaching in multiple modes are very much the same overall,” says Brian Beatty, professor of instructional design and technology at San Francisco State University and founder of the HyFlex method of course design.
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Here are the definitions of some common class types:
- Hybrid: This involves some in-person and some online learning.
- HyFlex: A mix of in-person and online learning opportunities for students that gives them a choice in how they’ll participate in sessions. “Bisynchronous learning is often part of a HyFlex design but is only a part of what might be offered,” Beatty adds. It requires students to choose from face-to-face options and at least one online option (synchronous, asynchronous or bisynchronous).
- Bichronous: “It relies on online learning tools and technology only,” Beatty says, pointing to EDUCAUSE’s first use of the term in September 2020. This is sometimes also called bisynchronous. The group’s qualitative study in 2023 highlighted a variety of promising practices in delivering via bisynchronous modality, according to Kathe Pelletier, director of EDUCAUSE’s teaching and learning program.
- In-person: Classes are taught fully on-premises.
- Simulcast/synchronous remote: Pelletier says this involves teaching from one location, either together with students or alone, and that class is simultaneously broadcast to another class location where other students are gathered. It’s less commonly referred to as “bisynchronous,” she adds.
Justin Lipp, director of the Center for Teaching and Educational Technology at Sonoma State University, says that at his university, “the bisynchronous definition is what we have officially adopted to include courses with this kind of classroom dynamic.”
The variations in terminology reflect a greater blurring between modalities in the future of education, Pelletier says.
“The bisynchronous learning modality adds a nuance to the online modality and is a great example of how modalities reflect both the dimensions of space and time,” she says. “Some would add a third dimension: the extent to which the learning is mediated by technology.”