Subject: The advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools.
We had a meeting last week in which you asked me that you want to develop a marketing team that will operate from different parts of the world. The team members will be located in New York, Beijing, and Mumbai. You asked me to setup a virtual meeting with these members of the marketing team by evaluating advantages and disadvantages of different tools that are available for synchronous and asynchronous communication. For this purpose, I have developed a report by using various journal articles on the internet and have selected the most appropriate strategies for the virtual communication.
Synchronous and asynchronous tools available today and can be used for various purposes by the company (Oztok et al., 2013). According to the research of Oztok et al., (2013) if the communication is required on the real-time basis the companies use Synchronous methods of communication such as voice chat, or video call. If the users are not online than asynchronous tools are used in which the communication is delayed.For example, chatting on social media (Bueno Alastuey, 2011). Thus, synchronous communication tools are helpful in discussing the issues that are needed to be solved on anurgent basis and asynchronous methods are used for not so urgent discussions.
The advantages of asynchronous method are that it allows real-time communication and the questions can be asked by the participant on spot in case of confusion (Murphy et al., 2011). The asynchronous method will benefit when the marketing team is present at different locations in the world because participants will be able to access the chat history to see who has contributed to the chat and the required tasks for the upcoming days. For example, a marketing team member used Google Docs for some reason. If he is absent next day the peer can access his file from the chat and review it in his absence. Therefore, the process will not be delayed due to his absence (Hsiao, 2012).
The disadvantage of thesynchronous method is that it demandshigh-speed internet and it is difficult to monitor whether each participant is attentive or not (Martin et al., 2012). During the analysis, it will be difficult to find out the origin of mistake because of real-time communication. The disadvantage of theasynchronous method is that it stops the conversation if a person is absent from the work (Oztok et al., 2013).
To use both the methods effectively, it is recommended that urgent orders should be made using synchronous methods and for the delayed actions asynchronous methods should be used (Murphy et al., 2011). However, the internet connection should be upgraded for using synchronous methods of communication.
References:
Bueno Alastuey, M. C. (2011). Perceived benefits and drawbacks of synchronous voice-based computer-mediated communication in the foreign language classroom. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24(5), 419-432.
Hsiao, E. L. (2012). Synchronous and asynchronous communication in an online environment: Faculty experiences and perceptions. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 13(1), 15.
Martin, F., Parker, M. A., & Deale, D. F. (2012). Examining interactivity in synchronous virtual classrooms. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(3), 228-261.
Murphy, E., Rodríguez‐Manzanares, M. A., & Barbour, M. (2011). Asynchronous and synchronous online teaching: Perspectives of Canadian high school distance education teachers. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(4), 583-591.
Oztok, M., Zingaro, D., Brett, C., & Hewitt, J. (2013). Exploring asynchronous and synchronous tool use in online courses. Computers & Education, 60(1), 87-94.
