Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many educational institutions worldwide to change their mode of education from synchronous face-to-face classes to synchronous online instruction using webinar infrastructure from technical platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, or Teams. This change was sudden, yet offered the chance to examine the effectiveness of synchronous online learning environments. As a result, the number of studies grew considerably. Of course, synchronous online learning is not a novel concept and many studies have tested and explored its effectiveness long before the COVID-19 pandemic stopped face-to-face education (Ebner & Gegenfurtner, 2019), for example in the domains of medical education (Alnabelsi et al., 2015; Constantine, 2012), teacher education (Amirova et al., 2023), and science education (Prawestri et al., 2020).

Research Questions:
Despite its widespread use, little is known if webinars are similarly effective as in-person face-to-face or asynchronous online education to promote learning and motivation. This meta-analysis (k = 31 studies, N = 3,823 learners) therefore aimed to answer three research questions:
(a) How effective is synchronous online learning in promoting learners’ affective outcomes, particularly their attitudes, satisfaction, self-efficacy, and interest?
(b) How effective is synchronous online learning in promoting learners’ cognitive outcomes, particularly their declarative knowledge and procedural skills?
(c) To what extent are affective and cognitive outcomes associated?

Methods:
To answer these three research questions:
(a) we performed a systematic search of relevant publications following the PRISMA recommendations,
(b) extracted and coded a number of variables from a total of twenty studies with 31 independent data sources, and
(c) meta-analyzed the coded information with corrections for sampling error.
Based on a random-effects model, the meta-analytic calculations were performed following Schmidt and Hunter’s (2015) recommendations for meta-analyses of experimental effects.

Results:
The results suggest that synchronous online learning is more effective than control conditions in promoting affective (Hedges’ gc = 0.24) and cognitive (gc = 0.50) learner outcomes. The positive effect of webinars was most pronounced when compared to waitlist conditions and asynchronous education programs and when affective outcomes were measured as self-efficacy beliefs. Two-tailed bivariate correlation analyses were performed to determine the extent to which affective and cognitive learner outcomes were associated. For the overall dataset (k = 31), the Pearson correlation coefficient between Hedges’ gc for the affective and Hedges’ gc for the cognitive outcomes was r = .48, p = .006. A sample-size weighted regression analysis reached statistical significance, with a standardized β = 0.52, SE = .16, p = .003. These estimates signal significant associations between affective and cognitive outcomes.

Discussion:
Our findings reported here signal that synchronous online learning has its place in the kaleidoscope of digital learning scenarios across the diversity of domains and disciplinary fields, including marketing, medical, religious, science, and teacher education. To conclude, synchronous online instruction using webinar infrastructure from technical platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, or Teams seems an effective intervention to promote learning and motivation also now in post-pandemic education.

Keywords: Webinars, synchronous online learning, meta-analysis.