Collaboration in online asynchronous & synchronous environments

Over the past several years I have mainly been an asynchronous being when it came to my online interactions.  For classes I used email and discussion boards, for work I used email and "semi-synchronous" chats, and at home I was on Facebook and email.  This past semester my eyes were really opened as part of the ID course I was taking required two synchronous class sessions and at least two synchronous group meetings during the course of our ID project.

I was pretty turned off at first, the idea of having to schedule out times in my busy days to meet with people I didn't know seemed like it may be a bit much for this introverted family guy.  It didn't take long for that impression to change.  We had our first class session on Illuminate and the professor was talking to us from a conference she was attending in Australia.  She went over varying course requirements, allowed us to ask any questions we might have about the fairly intense course and to just introduce ourselves in person (so to speak).  The second synchronous class session was much later, around week 6, and each group had to present work that they had collaborated on to the rest of the class.  It was really interesting and added a new dynamic to my typical online course experience.


Throughout the course my group met several times on Skype and while the planned meetings were usually scheduled for an hour we would find ourselves mixing in personal conversations with our work an developing connections that I had not made in any other of my online courses.  We mixed many of our Skype sessions with simultaneous Google Docs sessions as we collaborated on our project and as one of the new technologies we were experimenting with was edmodo we spent some time collaborating asynchronously on there as well.


Now that my ID course is over I do not find myself on Skype much any more, but I have still found many uses for newly discovered asynchronous technologies like Google Docs.  Right now I am collaborating with my wife's cousin as we work through the ceremony for her wedding in late July.

I really found that while I was reluctant to use the synchronous communications technologies I truly came to enjoy and appreciate them.  Skype and Illuminate allowed me to feel a connection to my instructor and to my classmates that I have never had before in an online course.  In addition to the relationship building they also facilitated  our group project in a far more expeditious manner than any experience I have previously had using discussion boards or email.  While I don't have a lot of people to talk to using synchronous technologies I can assure you that when the need arises I will be the first to suggest their use.