The Roles of Synchronicity in Distance Education in Japan: The Case of Open University of Japan

Though distance education has a long history, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided us with the opportunity to reexamine the roles of synchronicity in distance education. In Japan, distance education has been practiced mainly in an asynchronous format, originating in the “lecture notes” and subsequent “correspondence education.” In this paper, the case of the Open University of Japan (OUJ), a sole distance education university with a fully functional broadcast station, is discussed in examining the importance of synchronicity in distance education, where online synchronicity as a pedagogical tool was first introduced as the result of the urgent needs of replacing the face-to-face schooling cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of three surveys conducted after the emergency online classes in July 2020, and synchronous online classes offered in the second semester of 2021 and in the first semester of 2022, show that synchronicity is important for student engagement through interaction and a sense of presence though some students do not like the time bounding aspect of synchronicity; hence causing the synchronicity dilemma.