Effectiveness of Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Learning in Bloom's Taxonomy Framework

Abstract

Synchronous and asynchronous Learning is usually highly-structured, with course activities, assessments, and technology requirements explicitly written and scheduled. It allows great flexibility and accessibility for learners with strict alignment to the learning outcomes and module learning objectives. However, it is not clear that such synchronous or asynchronous learning is effective in different levels of courses which may require different levels of cognitive meta-process, knowledge dimensions and combination of both. In this paper, we re-aligned meta-analysis data by Zeng et al. 2023 in cognitive process and knowledge dimensions under revised Bloom's Taxonomy framework. We proposed a metric to compute cognitive complexity level on the re-aligned data. Our proposed metric was able to show that synchronous classes are more suitable for basic cognitive domain learning of factual knowledge and conceptual knowledge, while asynchronous classes are more suited to higher cognitive domain learning of procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Likewise, our further grouping in educational level were also able to show that asynchronous classes are more effective for learning at higher education levels when the subjects of learning are usually in higher knowledge dimensions. Both observations are congruent in expected trend of cognitive complexity.