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Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Qualitative Insights into Faculty Use of Student Support Services with Online Students at Risk: Implications for Student Retention

This article provides qualitative insights into the ways that faculty can impact retention rates of online students. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted at random with 16 faculty who teach online courses at a community college in the Northeast. Faculty were asked to describe behaviors of online students that made them feel concerned, conversations with these […]

Using Social Media Technologies to Enhance Online Learning

Models of distance education have evolved over decades, just in time to collide with modern pedagogies in which communication, interaction, student engagement, and active learning are of critical importance. The number of college students taking online classes continues to grow. Today, nearly 30% of college students are taking at least one online class. The social […]

Supporting Academic Honesty in Online Courses

Ensuring academic honesty is a challenge for traditional classrooms, but more so for online course where technology use is axiomatic to learning and instruction. With the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) requirement that online course providers reduce opportunities to cheat and verify student identity, all involved with course delivery must be informed about […]

Social Media and Health Education: What the Literature Says

Social media allows for a wealth of social interactions. More recently, there is a growing use of social media for the purposes of health education. Using an adaptation of the Networked student model by Drexler (2010) as a conceptual model, this article conducts a literature review focusing on the use of social media for health […]

Presence in E-learning : Theoretical Model and Perspectives for Research

This article proposes a model of presence in e-learning that has some similarities with but also some important distinctions from the model of community of inquiry in e-learning (Garrison & Anderson, 2003). It addresses the notion of presence from a different angle, characterizes and specifies it differently. The author outlines the epistemological referents of the […]

Virtual Teaming: Faculty Collaboration in Online Spaces

More than a decade ago, Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps’s (2000) book Virtual Teaming: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology prophesied a shift in communication and in the way businesses and organizations would get things done. “In time,” they wrote, “virtual teams will become the natural way to work, nothing special” (p. xxiv). The time […]

Training Evaluation in Virtual Worlds: Development of a Model

Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however, research on appropriate evaluation of training in this new setting is incomplete. In this article, we address this gap by first exploring the unique issues relevant to evaluation faced by training designers working in VWs. At the macro-organizational level, the primary […]

Comparing Attitudes of Online Instructors and Online College Students: Quantitative Results for Training, Evaluation and Administration

The past decade has witnessed an explosion in online learning opportunities for post-secondary students throughout the United States. The university has developed a Faculty Online Observation (FOO) model to allow for an annual observation of online adjunct faculty with a focus on five major areas of facilitation. To test the effectiveness and support of the FOO, […]

Assessment challenges in open learning: Way-finding, fork in the road, or end of the line?

Growing global commitments to open learning through the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) are accompanied by concerns over what “to do” with that learning when learners present it to traditional institutions for assessment and accreditation. This paper proposes that established RPL (recognizing prior learning) protocols, in place at many institutions worldwide, can offer a […]

Information and communication technology related needs of college and university students with disabilities

Purpose: To explore variables related to how well the information and communication technologies (ICTs) related needs of students with different disabilities are being met on campus at institutions of higher education, at home and in e-learning contexts. We also explore the disciplines and programmes pursued by students with different disabilities and the specialised ICTs they […]