My experience with asynchronous learning began alongside many others, during the Covid-19 Pandemic. My classes went fully online when I was in Grade 10, and I found that I procrastinated all of the work until the very last two days, when I spent 48 hours doing a semester worth of work. In High School, I found synchronous learning worked better for me because it had hard deadlines.

In University, I began commuting to school, 1.5h each way. With set 8:30am classes each morning and no flexibility, I found that synchronous classes were my downfall. I work every night, so at most I get about 6 hours of sleep, because all my time goes into commuting rather that learning. Asynchronous classes worked so much better for me, because I could put time into learning, doing the work, and being engaged (rather than tired) over just commuting back and forth.

So we get this interesting sort of juxtaposition between my experiences with asynchronous classes. When looking back, what I think it really boils down to is design. My Covid classes were designed to by synchronous, so they felt unengaging and unmotivating when taken asynchronously, while my University classes were asynchronous by design.