Drawbacks of Synchronous Online

Learning:
While one of the greatest aspects of synchronous online learning
is connecting with anyone form anywhere in the
world, it leads to one of the most common
frustrations, connecting together at the same
time across time zones. In our class, while the
students were all within an hour of each other,
the professor was in Ireland. Even with the
students in similar time zones, getting working
graduate students to align schedules on the
weekend for an hour session proved to be
difficult at times. Tabak and Rampal (2014) cited
this also as a difficulty of synchronous online
learning in higher education.
Another drawback of synchronous online learning
is issues arising from the specific technical
requirements including a computer with high
speed internet access, synchronous online
learning software, microphone, speakers/headset,
video camera etc. For our synchronous class we
used GoToTraining for our software, while this has
a free trail, it is a program that costs money.
There are many other options as well such as Bigbluebutton in CANVAS
and even free options like using Skype if you have a small enough
group. In their study Tabak and Rampal (2014) stated that the
complexity of using online synchronous conferences tools was a
drawback for some students.
In addition to allowing students to access the course content on their
own time, asyncrosus online learning allows students time to process
and respond in a delayed fashion instead of the immediate response of
a synchronous class. Also in order to manage an online synchronous
conference, the groups must be limited in size. Because of this you are
limiting the input to the group and the compatibility of these small
intimate online groups can cause issues according to Tabak and
Rampal (2014).

References:
Tabak, Filiz & Rampal, Rohit (2014). International Journal of Education
& Development using Information & Communication Technology ,
10 (4), 80- 92.