Menu

Distance-Educator.com

Premier Portal for Professionals Since 1995, Covering Technology-Based Education

Archive for the ‘Learners’ Category

Age is no barrier to OU success as new graduates prove

From age 18 to 81, this year hundreds of our students – at all stages of life – have celebrated achieving their degrees. The wide range of ages shows the OU welcomes everyone to study, at any age and time of life. The Open University 

An examination of factors that impact the retention of online students at a for-profit university

Online learning has continued to grow in recent years. However, retaining students in online courses and programs has posed a challenge. Whether the university is public, private, offers both face-to-face and online programs, or is 100% online, retaining students in online programs can be an issue. This study reflects the widespread desire at a large […]

Celebrating the success of our students on a global scale

The OU is pleased to congratulate its students, who have achieved honours in a global undergraduate competition. The Undergraduate Awards (UA) Programme is the world’s largest international academic awards programme, and 27 OU students have achieved honours in the 2017 awards. The UA programme recognises innovation and excellence at undergraduate level. For the first time […]

Why blogs endure: A study of recent college graduates and motivations for blog readership

This paper reports the results from a mixed methods study of recent college graduates who were asked if and why they used blogs as sources for continued learning purposes. Findings are based on 1,651 online survey responses and 63 follow-up telephone interviews with young graduates from 10 U.S. colleges and universities. Despite the media’s declarations […]

Towards an automatic classification system for supporting the development of critical reflective skills in L2 learning

This study aimed to develop an automatic classification system, namely ACTIVE, for generating immediate and individualised feedback on students’ reflective entries about their second language (L2) learning experiences. It also aimed to explore students’ attitudes towards using the system to support the development of their reflective skills in L2 learning. A total of 466 undergraduate […]

Communities of inquiry in curriculum approach to online learning: Strengths and limitations in context

The case study discussed in this article examines how the community of inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010) was used to redesign the digital learning environment in the context of an Australian university. Some purposes were to replicate features of a traditional classroom and to support collaboration between professionals with different expertise. The […]

Understanding Faculty Use of the Learning Management System

The learning management system (LMS) has become a critical tool for nearly all institutions of higher education, and a driving force in online learning. According to a 2014 report by the Educause Center for Analysis and Research, 99% of higher education institutions have an LMS in place, and the LMS is used by 85% of […]

Persistence in an Online Master’s Degree Program: Perceptions of Students and Faculty

Persistence in online learning experiences has been perceived as chronically lower than in face-to-face learning, but a comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon has proven elusive.  As online learning opportunities continue to expand, a better understanding of how learners and faculty perceive persistence is needed to foster this continued growth, and was the objective of this […]

Learner Behaviour in a MOOC Practice-oriented Course: In Empirical Study Integrating TAM and TPB

Few practice-oriented courses are currently integrated into online learning platforms, such as OpenCourseWare, Khan Academy, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It is worthwhile to explore how learners respond to information technology and new teaching methods when practice-oriented course are placed online. Therefore, this study probes learner willingness to participate in a practice-oriented course distributed […]

MIT Media Lab Learning Initiative

The ML Learning initiative is built around a cohort of learning innovators from across the diverse Media Lab groups. We explores learning across many dimensions, ranging from neurons to nations, from early childhood to lifelong scholarship, and from human creativity to machine intelligence.  In addition to creating tools and models, the initiative provides non-profit and […]