Gabriel B.

Mondejar

The sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged universities to provide students with online
teaching and learning settings that were both immediately applicable and supportive of quality learning.
This resulted in a broad variety of synchronous and asynchronous online settings of teaching and
learning. While some courses balanced both kinds, others offered either predominantly synchronous or
asynchronous teaching and learning. In a survey study with students (N=3,056) and teachers (N=396)
from a large German university, we explored whether a predominance of synchronous or asynchronous
teaching and learning settings in higher education was associated with certain student experiences and
outcomes. Additionally, we examined how well these two types of teaching and learning settings
support students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness proposed by
self-determination theory (SDT). Data were collected after the first online semester due to the COVID-19
pandemic. The results imply that from the students’ perspective, the teaching methods involved in the
two settings of teaching and learning differ with regard to their potential to support social interaction
and to support basic psychological needs as proposed by SDT. Students who studied mostly in
synchronous settings reported more peer-centered activities such as feedback in comparison to
students in mostly asynchronous settings. In contrast, teachers perceived fewer differences between
teaching methods in synchronous and asynchronous settings, especially regarding feedback activities.
Further, students in mostly synchronous settings reported greater support of their basic psychological
needs for competence support and relatedness as well as a greater overall satisfaction with the online
term compared to students in mostly asynchronous settings. Across all students, greater fulfillment of
psychological needs and higher technology acceptance coincided with outcomes that are more
favorable. Implications for the post-pandemic classroom are drawn.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8542673/