Asynchronous communication that builds rapport among university course designers and external edtech providers, explained by Rae Mancilla and Nadine Hamman in the first part of a series looking at strategies for successful learning design partnerships. After two previously unsuccessful design partnerships, university and edtech team leaders re-envisioned a new model for collaboration. This three-part series documents practical strategies deployed by the University of Pittsburgh-Construct team to lay the foundation for a strong design partnership. In the first part, we will focus on four asynchronous strategies to streamline cross-team collaboration.