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This section covers the various models of facilitation (the act of moderating a discussion) for asynchronous interaction as well as various teaching strategies and techniques that can be used in the on-line course.
Asynchronous interaction, for the purposes of distance learning, is interaction that takes place at different times and in different places. An good example of asynchronous interaction is e-mail. E-mail allows individuals to communicate with each other over distances through a back and forth correspondance. Person "A" may send an email to another Person "B". Person "B" may not receive the email until a later time when they check their email and read it. They can then respond to Person "A". Person "A" may not read the response until some later time when they check their e-mail. This is what we mean by asynchronous interaction. It is a back-and-forth dialog. In an on-line or web-based course, the interaction is usually conducted through an electronic bulletin board that functions in some ways like e-mail except that all of the postings to the bulletin board are stored as an archive whereby threads of particular discussion topics can be read together as group without having to read other unrelated postings.
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Asynchronous Facilitation