The Transition of a School Counseling Program: The Shift From Traditional to Synchronous to Asynchronous Learning

Background

This chapter details how a master’s program in counseling transitioned from a traditional learning model to an asynchronous learning model in response to a university-wide asynchronous initiative. The rationale for the initiative is that it would provide students with greater flexibility, increased accessibility, and more choices regarding content, materials, and resources. The asynchronous initiative provided a common design model with general guidelines and parameters, but as part of the pre-design process, the school counseling department reviewed several theoretical frameworks to determine which recommendations and features were essential to the program’s learning outcomes. The department reviewed recent research literature on effective online instruction and evaluation, asynchronous learning, precision learning, competency-based instruction, inquiry-based instruction, and learner control to determine the pedagogical approach to the content and web-based instruction.

During the literature review, several questions emerged apposite to a school counseling program: 1) How do students in an asynchronous environment know the instructor is there for them? 2) How can the instructor replicate the sense of a physical presence in an asynchronous learning environment? 3) What role does course structure play in effectively establishing an instructor’s presence? (Ekmekei, 2013).

Reviews of research examining learner control in adult web-based instruction produced mixed findings with many confounding variables (Landers & Reddock, 2017). However, a number of studies over the past five years have provided greater insight into the importance of learner-controlled instruction in achieving positive academic outcomes (Landers & Reddock, 2017).