Making Education Asynchronous

Some parts of life are highly asynchronous. You send an email, you go do something else; the person on the other end replies whenever she wants etc. You take your car to the mechanic, leave it there, later in the day he fixes it. After he finishes he calls you, and you come and pick it up when its convenient for you.
There is a decoupling between events that makes it possible for two independent actors to organize themselves according to their own priorities. They only need send messages back and forth to plan exchanges.

But other things are synchronous: a conversation, a meeting, a phone call. Even for two people to meet sometimes requires difficult scheduling. Increase the number to more than 7 and scheduling becomes exponentially difficult.

So to deal with this exponential difficulty you drop people. The Baltimore Orioles do not phone all of their fans to schedule a baseball game at a convenient time for everyone. Whoever can come, comes. Whoever can make it, makes it. Whoever can’t, too bad. It works well for a baseball game. 

Lets imagine the situation in a typical college semester. Classes are scheduled like baseball games. Testing is done similarly. If something else comes up during the semester--sickness, death of a loved one, lack of money--too bad. Its up to you to negotiate to save the work you’ve put in.

We accept this system because it is proven. But imagine the advantages of an asynchronous system. Pick up and leave off wherever you want. Take a break in the middle of the semester to work at an interesting temporary job. Stop studying a topic to dive into more interesting topics coming back to the original topic with more knowledge and learning it well instead of poorly. It sounds like a nice daydream.

Its not. Its possible within the boundaries of technology today. Its possible within the education systems we have to day. It would be possible to design and gradually transition to such a system today.


The most convenient parts of life are highly asynchronous. Education should be too.

-Tomaz