Asynchronous Training: What is it? Is It Beneficial? How to Implement?

Asynchronous training is the need of the hour in this globalized, remote world where communication has gone digital.

Video has taken over the new world of online training, bringing in a human touch while leaving behind boring classrooms and lengthy textbooks – especially for larger organizations needing to train their global teams operating in different time zones.

The onset of COVID truly brought video communication to light (you must have heard of Zoom Boom, right?).

However, as time went by, Zoom fatigue set in. Standford researchers identified the 4 causes of Zoom fatigue:

Excessive eye contact required
Continuously having to see yourself
Mobility is restricted – participants are usually limited to cramped spaces
Video meetings increase the cognitive load by a great deal

This is where is Asynchronous training steps in – you can either have pre-recorded self-paced training from the get-go or choose to have a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous training.

In this blog, let's explore what exactly is asynchronous training, how it benefits large and small organizations alike, and how organizations can effectively streamline this training format.

What is Asynchronous Training?

Asynchronous training is an on-demand, self-paced format of online training. You can have an entirely asynchronous training model or a blend of asynchronous and synchronous trainings combined to get the best of both worlds.

In a blended async training model, you can have your live training sessions recorded, edited, and then uploaded as self-paced training modules for future review or for the learner that couldn't attend the live session.

It is best to have video-based training for asynchronous learning modules to ensure an engaged and interactive experience with a human touch.

For instance, in the future, when you hire new people, you can use asynchronous videos to train them on Shopify email marketing, SaaS promotion, and other business strategies you may have.

Benefits of Asynchronous Training

There is no denying the importance of corporate training. Benjamin Franklin got it right when he said, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest".

Asynchronous training offers organizations, especially those with thousands of employees working globally in different time zones. Here are the 6 main benefits showing the impact of asynchronous training:

Learners Can Learn at Their Own Pace

These self-paced trainings are perfect for busy business professionals who cannot align their calendars to find a mutually agreeable time for a real-time training session.

Plus, each learner has their own preference for how much content they can take in at one time. An asynchronous video's speed can be increased or decreased, and you can also go back to rewatch any missed concept.

Distance Learning Research conducted by National Centre for Education found 58% of the workforce prefers self-paced training combined with the option of learning from home if a learner prefers that.

Watch Training Wherever Whenever

Today, employee training tools providing asynchronous training videos allow employees to easily watch these as and when they like in their own time at home, on the way, or at the office.

Review And Playback Concepts When Needed

Training must not be a one-time thing. They need to be reusable video assets openly accessible to your team whenever they need to go back to revise any particular concept.

These reusable asynchronous training assets will also come in handy when new team members join a project – you will not need to conduct the exact same training again.

No Time Zone Is Left Out

In this day and age, most organizations have employees in different regions around the world. When it is 11 am in the UK, it will be 7 pm in Japan. You can't imagine all these employees being available simultaneously for a training session.

Makes Trainings Accessible

Asynchronous online training also ensures much greater accessibility through the possibility of opting for a video training platform providing accessibility capabilities like automatic multilingual transcription, keyboard shortcuts, audio descriptions, etc.

Saves Time and Money

Physical trainings are much more costly than online training – they have an added venue cost. If there are multiple offices, then each office will require separate sessions. Plus, you will have to hold these trainings again when new employees join.

Real-time trainings are also costly as you will still have to hold these redundant sessions whenever a new member joins or when content is updated. External instructors have their own fees – and if it is an internal employee, their wasted time also has a cost attached to it.

Asynchronous training allows you to create reusable training assets that can be slightly tweaked for new updates or simple new videos can be shot and added to the course. Ultimately, your organization will save time and money.

VIDIZMO: Must-Have Smart Video Training Platform for Asynchronous Training

It is critical to have a video training platform for organizing, centralizing, and streamlining all your training content in one place accessible globally.

VIDIZMO AI-powered video training platform allows you to do just that effectively. It is a SCORM-compliant, user-friendly video platform, kind of like YouTube, but for larger organizations with internal, private videos.

You can stream both synchronous and asynchronous video trainings on VIDIZMO's video learning platform. You can even go beyond by using VIDIZMO's end-to-end video content management capabilities, including:

In-video interactive elements like trackable quizzes, downloadable handouts, feedback surveys, and much more
Collaborative features like time-stamp comments, in-video annotations, social sharing options, etc.
Live stream recording can be edited, trimmed down, split into bite-sized chunks, and arranged in a playlist to be available as reusable training assets
Categories as well as manual and auto-tags to organize your training content – you can even feature specific videos, playlists, categories, and tags on your video portal home page
Out-of-the-box integrations available with our learning tools like LMS and online meeting solutions such as Zoom and MS Teams
Multilingual platform with automatic transcription and their translation of videos in 50+ languages, making your courses accessible globally
Advanced video analytic reports to quantify training effectiveness – checking course completion, retention and comprehension
Private video hosting with training content restricted to only authenticated users and group
Course completion certificates to reward learners
Compatibility with all devices and browsers as well as adaptive bitrate streaming for the best possible viewing experience on varying bandwidth conditions