Online communication
Categories of online communication
• One way of categorising online communication is to think about whether it
is asynchronous (independent of time) or synchronous (in real time).
• Asynchronous communication is when a message is sent and received at
different times, so there is no need for the sender and the recipient to be
online at the same time.
• A forum is an example of asynchronous communication: you can post a
message whenever you want, but the response to your message might not be
immediate.
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Categories of online communication
• Synchronous communication occurs in real time, so all participants
must be online at the same time, and responses tend to be almost
instant.
• Face-to-face and telephone calls communication are synchronous.
• If I was in a room with you and started a conversation, you would hear what I
had to say straight away and you would be able to answer straight away.
• Similarly, if I phoned you and you answered the phone, the conversation
would be synchronous.
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Asynchronous communication tools
1. Email
• Is an asynchronous tool that is most often used for one-to-one
communication. Most email systems allow you to create mailing lists
that define groups of people to whom you wish to send certain
messages. For example, your tutor could create a mailing list that
contains email addresses for all the members of your tutor group.
2. Discussion forums
• An alternative to a mailing list is a discussion forum. Discussion forums
go under different names, such as ‘online forum’, ‘web forum’, ‘internet
forum’ or just ‘forum’. You must be familiar with using forums in your OU
study. You’ll also find many different kinds of forums on the web, with
different user interfaces and different types of discussion and topics.
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Synchronous communication tools
Synchronous technologies have the benefit of enabling users to give
or receive an immediate response.
1. Text chat
• A chat tool allows users to type in messages to each other in real time.
2. Instant messaging
• Another variation on synchronous text-based communication is instant
messaging (IM).
• Examples of IM systems are Facebook’s Messenger for social contexts and, in
the workplace, the IM facility in Skype for Business.
3. Video and Audio conference.
These applications run on desktop or mobile devices, and make live video
communication accessible to everyone.
