Menu

Distance-Educator.com

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

Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Factors in High Quality Distance Learning Courses

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that contribute to high quality distance learning courses and how to overcome barriers to offering them. For the purposes of this report, high quality equates to courses that receive high scores on student satisfaction surveys and other benchmarks that measure student performance. Corry (2008) suggests there […]

A Faculty Observation Model for Online Instructors: Observing Faculty Members in the Online Classroom

Maintaining academic standards, retention of quality online instructors and establishing a measure for instruction can be enhanced through faculty observation and evaluation. As Park University entered the online market, the increased course offerings involved an increased number of adjunct faculty members. In order to ensure that these faculty members used best practices and maintain high […]

Relationship Between Personality Characteristics of Online Instructors and Student Evaluations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between each of the five personality factors in the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and online faculty student evaluations. Faculty members from the School of Criminal Justice (CJ) and the School of Information Technology (IT) from an online university were asked to complete the BFI (44 […]

Sustaining teacher control in a blog-based personal learning environment

Various tools and services based on Web 2.0 (mainly blogs, wikis, social networking tools) are increasingly used in formal education to create personal learning environments, providing self-directed learners with more freedom, choice, and control over their learning. In such distributed and personalized learning environments, the traditional role of the teacher is being transformed into that […]

Using Learning Analytics to Predict (and Improve) Student Success: A Faculty Perspective

earning analytics is receiving increased attention, in part because it offers to assist educational institutions in increasing student retention, improving student success, and easing the burden of accountability. Although these large-scale issues are worthy of consideration, faculty might also be interested in how they can use learning analytics in their own courses to help their […]

Community of Inquiry Framework: Establishing Community in an Online Course

Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, the author conducted a mixed method research study to examine the existence of the three CoI elements in a graduate-level educational technology online course. The author also looked at student perceptions and preference for community in online learning. High mean scores on the CoI showed that all three […]

Where Has The Time Gone? Faculty Activities and Time Commitments in the Online Classroom

While research has examined the comparative time commitment required for on line versus face-to-face teaching, little is known about the distribution of faculty time investment into the various aspects of online course facilitation. The purpose of this study is to examine the proportion of time faculty devote to each of the pedagogical components that are […]

The influence of students’ ICT skills and their adoption of mobile learning

Mobile technology has gained increased focus in academic circles as a way to enable learning that is not confined by time and place. As the benefits of mobile learning are being clarified so too will researchers need to understand the factors that influence its future use. The adoption of mobile technology will largely depend on […]

Leading the quality management of online learning environments in Australian higher education

The paper presents the findings of the first year of a nationally funded Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project on the quality management of online learning environments by and through distributed leadership. The project is being undertaken by five Australian universities with major commitments to online and distance education. Each university, however, has a […]

From resistance to acceptance and use of technology in academia

The phenomenon of faculty’s resistance to use technology in higher education is the focus of this research as a secondary reading of the existing relevant research with the purpose of analyzing factors of resistance and finding the solutions. This paper is an excerpt from a Doctoral dissertation and is focused on the causes of resistance […]