I don’t believe I would use asynchronous learning to teach how to tile a floor. The learner would become frustrated with reading a long e-mail on how to do it. A discussion board would become to long also and text messaging would take way to long. So what I would have accomplished by using this form of instruction is one really upset individual who just wanted to tile his or her own bathroom floor.
Instead I would probably use Audiographics technology. Audiographic technology is used to provide multiway audio and a shared screen, and was used to conduct real-time tutorials with remote students (Mason, 2003). Mason writes that Audiographic technology is good for problem solving sessions in mathematics, language practice in second language classes, syndicate work in business courses, and collaborative project work among student in many subject areas. I believe this would also be helpful technology to teach an individual the skill of laying tile, especially if it could be archived. This would allow the individual to play it as often or pause the archived Audiographic as they need to.
I would not have given this any thought of possibly working in the past because this type of technology required two telephone lines: one for sound and one for the audio. With the way the Internet is changing and with the new Collaboration Software that is available this can be easily achieved now. With collaboration software you have available communication software and content development software combined.
The most important thing to remember as an Instructional Designer is that not all software and technology is going to be a good fit for your instructional purpose. Research is your friend and you need to find what combination of technology and software are going to give you the end result.
Reference
Mason, R. (2003). Evolving technologies. Encyclopedia of distributed learning.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Media. Walden University. Flash Program: "Classification of Learning Technology
Software"
