More than 50 higher education professionals joined me during the ACBSP Excellence in Teaching Track for a presentation on the impact that synchronous activities can have on students in online classrooms. The presentation explored literature on the tradeoffs students face for the convenience of online learning and opportunities that live interaction might offer to students in online environments. We also reviewed the results of a project to test the impact of live sessions on the psychological factors that serve as predictors of student success in otherwise asynchronous environments. The results found significant improvement in student learning outcomes and faculty satisfaction in comparison to control groups. The following are a link to the presentation slides and a summary of the research.

Have you ever been on a winning team? How did it make you feel to be a participating team member? Did you have more fun playing the game with others than when you played the game alone? Did you become a better player by practicing with the other team members? Did the team become more successful when it helped individuals develop better skills? Have you ever noticed effective groups that achieve high-performance levels, like a championship baseball team, a rock band, a debate team, a school orchestra, or a product development team? What makes those groups successful?