While many online educational programs started out as and with the advent of web conferencing tools, people can learn at the same time in different places as well.
For example, use of instant messaging or live chat, webinars and video conferencing allow for students and teachers to collaborate and learn in real time.
Another example of a synchronous learning event would involve students watching a live web stream of a class, while simultaneously taking part in a discussion.
These synchronous experiences can be designed to develop and strengthen instructor-student and student-student relationships, which can be a challenge in distance learning programs.
Manifestations of interactive multimedia, the Internet, access to Web-based resources, to synchronous and asynchronous forms of computer mediated communication followed in the 1990s[7] (Bernard, et al., 2005; Simonson, et al., 2012, p. 37).