<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> This page is part of The Toolbox by Danny Smith.

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If you need to create a simple series of asynchronous “lessons” – perhaps as part of your employee onboarding experience – this guide offers a few tips for how to do that well. I’d recommend reading about How Learning Works before going further with this guide.

What’s an Asynchronous Lesson?

When we say asynchronous lesson we mean something like what you’re reading right now… a written document that learners are expected to read. A lot of the tools in this toolbox started out as asynchronous lessons in various courses.

Unlike synchronous lessons or workshops, async lessons are designed so learners can complete them whenever they choose. They're particularly well suited to delivering information, which frees up any synchronous time to focus on discussion, exploration, discovery and thinking together.

In this document, we'll look briefly at some of the principles and conventions I’ve used when building this type of lesson.

Principles

We have three main principles for writing async lessons.

1. Written word first - Reading and writing are fundamental skills for remote working. We want our lessons to be examples of high-quality documentation. So we default to written content.
2. Be predictable - Learners shouldn't have to work to understand our lessons. Being predictable with things like structure & formatting make this easier.
3. Encourage reflection and action - Although async lessons are often about delivering information, we should take every opportunity to encourage action and reflection on the part of the learner.

Lesson Structure