Associate Professor Lisa Jacka: Welcome everybody. Thank you for listening. Today I have my good friend and colleague Dr. Julie Lindsay here to talk about all things asynchronous. I’d like to kick off by asking you, Julie, about a phrase that I often hear you use about asynchronous learning – that asynchronous is the glue that holds all online learning together. What can you tell us about this phrase?

Dr. Julie Lindsay: Yes, look, that’s a phrase that I’ve been using for quite a while, and it relates to the fact that learners need connection. They require connection. Learning is about socialization. It’s about connecting with others. It’s about creating knowledge with others. We know that when we’re in a face-to-face classroom – doesn’t matter what level of education – that connection is much more easily made. You can look at someone, learners can put their hand up, and you can say, “What have you got to say?”

But of course, when we’re learning online or hybrid – sometimes on campus, sometimes online – we don’t necessarily have those clear connection lines. It’s not visible. It’s not transparent. Therefore, we must develop effective ways of learning through asynchronous means, which means we’re not in the same place at the same time, or in different places at the same time as in a hybrid setup where some students are online and some students might be face-to-face.

In my view and in my experience, asynchronous learning needs just as much, if not more, design capacity to make it an effective way for learners to connect and to learn from each other and from the educator. Certain educational technology tools leverage this connection – leverage this gluey asynchronous approach – tools like VoiceThread, tools like Padlet, so that students can access information, they can access ideas, they can access course content, they can contribute, they can collaborate, and share in an asynchronous manner. They don’t have to be in a certain place at a certain time. They don’t have to be in a virtual classroom or in an on-campus classroom. Educators can look in on these asynchronous tools and respond and post things.

I started blogging in 2005, and pretty quickly I got my students to start blogging. I was in a K-12 environment then. It was amazing to me how I got to know my students so much more through their blog posts rather than them sitting in class. In a typical class, doesn’t matter what level, the more gregarious students put up their hand – they want to talk, they want to answer – and the quieter students just keep their thoughts to themselves. But of course, when they start blogging or contributing asynchronously, it’s a similar action process. You actually get to see those thoughts and you get to see what their understanding is of the course, the class, the content, and the concepts.

Associate Professor Lisa Jacka: You make some really good points there, Julie. It’s really interesting to hear you talk about blogging and to know that you’re still doing blogging. Actually, it’s surprising to me how few people do actually do things like blogging. But I’m wondering if you could also give us another tip – something that somebody could do in their contemporary higher education classroom to help with the asynchronous glue.

Dr. Julie Lindsay: All right. Well, one tool that I love and that has been around for years and has continued to develop and expand – and of course these days has taken on a number of AI features that we can leverage as part of our use – is Padlet. Now Padlet can be as simple as “introduce yourself, put a photo up there of whatever you want – the view outside my window – and get to know the other people in the class” asynchronously, of course.

It can also be an individual Padlet for student assessment that can then be shared amongst the class so they can see each other’s assessment. It can be all sorts of things. We run a Padlet at the moment with a whole lot of AI tools and articles and resources on it that we just keep adding to, and people look in in their own time, they contribute in their own time. So a tool like that becomes a seamless connection between interested stakeholders. And when we’re talking about learning and teaching, the stakeholders are the learners and the teachers.

Associate Professor Lisa Jacka: I want to ask you a bit more about the idea of the glue. From what I can make out, the glue is about continuing to have a social connection with others. But is there another way you might phrase it? I’m really curious about why glue? Why not, I don’t know, string or something else?

Dr. Julie Lindsay: Good point. Actually, I should have gone back further to when I first started using that term, and that was when I was running the early global projects with Flat Classroom, where participating classrooms were in all different parts of the world. Because of our time zone differences and the fact that students were in class – you know, like 9 to 3 on a typical working day in different countries – there was very little synchronous overlap. The only way students could get to know each other was through asynchronous activity, and we used wikis in those days and different tools.

But the glue, I think, is the best term because it’s through those tools, it’s through those behaviors and working practices and attitudes and mindsets that the project could evolve and develop into a great learning experience. Because if we didn’t have a focus on asynchronous learning, you would be relying on synchronous meetups that wouldn’t have got the whole project into one meeting because we had projects all around the world – schools coming together in one project all around the world.

Relying on synchronous was not glue. It was like a river – it was flowing. The problem is, these days of course, there is still a mindset that global collaboration does not really take place unless you’re in the same space at the same time, or hybrid – in person and online. And that’s not true. And that’s why, you know, trying to use this metaphor, I guess, or analogy of the glue, I’m hoping will help people realize that, “Oh yeah, we can still learn together. We don’t have to be face-to-face. We can still do lots of things. We can co-create. We can build projects together. We can ideate and build ideas and solutions to problems quite easily asynchronously.” We don’t have to be in the same space at the same time.

Associate Professor Lisa Jacka: You talked about blogging in 2005 – twenty years ago. And I guess something I’m thinking about is that we actually do live a lot of our lives in an asynchronous way now, like more so than we used to. I think we are actually quite asynchronous in our behaviors with each other. And it surprises me that this doesn’t translate into the teaching and learning environment, particularly in higher ed – particularly with adults, for example, where there’s a resistance and, like you mentioned, synchronous still seems to be the go-to place. So I guess I was just wondering what your thoughts on that might be.

Dr. Julie Lindsay: You’re absolutely right, because these days we text rather than call straight away. We don’t feel funny interrupting people. We text and say, “You ready for a phone call?” or “Can you chat now?” And we do that automatically, whereas there’s a lack of belief that asynchronous learning is effective. And I still have people saying to me, “Oh, but how can they really learn if they’re not in the same room as the teacher?” I’m actually really surprised in 2025 that that conversation still takes place.

Associate Professor Lisa Jacka: Yes, I’m surprised too. So hopefully the work we’ve been doing will have some impact into the future and things will change.

Dr. Julie Lindsay: I hope so, and I’m sure it will, because asynchronous is the glue that holds online learning together.