Online Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Software Training Through the Behavioral Modeling Approach: A Longitudinal Field Experiment

The continued and increasing use of online training raises the question of whether the most effective training methods applied in live instruction will carry over to different online environments in the long run. Behavior Modeling (BM) approach – teaching through demonstration — has been proven as the most effective approach in a face-to-face (F2F) environment. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 96 undergraduate students who were taking a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 course in a university in Taiwan. The BM approach was employed in three learning environments — F2F, online synchronous and online asynchronous classes. The results were compared to see which produced the best performance, as measured by knowledge near-transfer and knowledge far-transfer effectiveness. Overall satisfaction with training was also measured. The results of the experiment indicate that during a long duration of training no significant difference in learning outcomes could be detected across the three learning environments.