Online education...that fits your schedule!

You’re a busy working professional, endeavoring to boost your expertise and career potential by earning a graduate degree. You juggle work, family, and your studies -- and sometimes it’s a challenge. Your online class meets at a designated time each week. But sometimes your project team is scrambling to meet a deadline, and you have to stay late. Sometimes you’re on travel. Or your child has a band concert or sports event that night.

Often you find yourself thinking: “if only my classes could adjust to my schedule, and not the other way around.”

Online education: synchronous and asynchronous

Fortunately, it’s possible. A well-designed online class does not have to take place in real time. Through a combination of recorded lectures, slides, discussion threads, graded assignments, and supplementary resources, course content can be delivered effectively and efficiently -- and in a way that frees students from the constraints of a set schedule. This approach is known as “asynchronous online education.”

Capitol Tech has long been a pioneer in the online education world. We were one of the first colleges to launch online graduate programs. We offer nationally-recognized online degrees that include doctorates in cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, business analytics, technology, and unmanned systems applications, along with nine master’s degree programs. Until now, though, these programs have been offered primarily in a live, online (“synchronous”) format.

Removing a barrier to academic goals

“There are many students out there who have been deterred from achieving their academic goals because they couldn’t make the scheduling work,” says Dianne O’Neill, senior vice president for enrollment management and marketing. “Think of soldiers deployed overseas, for example -- or on bases in different time zones. With asynchronous courses, they’ll be able to enroll and successfully complete a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree.”

The addition of asynchronous is a natural progression for a school that has built a reputation for excellence in online education, O’Neill says. “Online education has always been about enhancing opportunity. Indeed, that is something you can say about the internet as a whole: it connects people with opportunities that would otherwise have been inaccessible to them. Asynchronous is a logical next step.”

By offering a full palette of course delivery modes -- asynchronous, synchronous, and traditional brick-and-mortar classroom learning -- Capitol can strengthen its position in an increasingly complex global education marketplace, says Soren Ashmall, the university’s director of assessment and accreditation.

“Asynchronous is not a threat to synchronous; they can co-exist quite nicely,” Ashmall says. “It’s really about answering a preference: do you as a student favor an environment in which you’re live, the professor is live, and you’re interacting with other students in real-time, or do you like to do it at your own pace? For those with busy professional lives, flexibility may be a high priority.”

“You might see that you have extra general leave time at work and decide to take some days off to focus on the course. Or maybe you find blocks of time during the work week,” Ashmall says. “Our master’s and doctoral programs mainly serve students who have already advanced in their careers, and they value this kind of flexibility.”

Ensuring Excellence

So how does asynchronous delivery stack up against live online or brick-and-mortar classrooms when it comes to learning quality? Kimberly Udeh, Capitol’s director of instructional design and online learning, says excellence depends on tailoring courses to student needs, and on faculty who know how to make the most of an asynchronous course environment.

“In an asynchronous environment you can still create interactive experiences through gaming or simulations,” Udeh notes. “A lot depends on faculty who can make creative and effective use of an asynchronous platform.”

Ashmall, the director of assessment and accreditation, also teaches at the university and is active in the International Society for Technology Education, serving there as a specialist on gaming and simulation. In his own classes, he uses a variety of multimedia, gaming, and simulation resources.

“One of the crucial things in any course, regardless of the delivery system, is to give students practical experience with the material we cover in class, so that they’re not just learning passively but actually applying what they’ve learned,” Ashmall notes. “Some simulations might put you in the role of a CEO. In others, you might be part of a team that runs a small coffee house.”

It’s a mistake, he says, to assume that a live environment means a more dynamic one. “Simulations not only offer students a more engaging learning environment, but they provide a way to make the critical leap from concept to practice.”

Capitol is a small university with a well-defined niche in engineering, technology, and business education -- and that, according to Udeh, is an advantage when it comes to developing asynchronous courses. 

“We serve students who come to us with very specific learning goals,” she says. “That means we can be very effective in developing courses -- across any delivery platform -- that meet the needs of our students,” she said.