Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Faculty Technology Usage Resulting from Institutional Migration to a New Learning Management System

Research literature is flush with articles discussing how teachers use individual learning management systems. However, very few studies examine how faculty are affected as they move from one platform to another. This study addresses that gap and examines how faculty adapt their online teaching practices as they migrate systems. In doing so, faculty usage levels […]

Issues in Distance Education

Current issue of New Directions for Higher Education (Number 173 Spring 2016) Edited by Maureen Snow Andrade In this environment of disruptive technological change, higher education institutions must determine whether they will develop and offer technology-supported, hybrid, or online courses and degrees, which courses and degrees, how many, for whom, and for what purpose. They […]

Download Report: Public Predictions for the Future of Workforce Automation

A majority of Americans predict that within 50 years, robots and computers will do much of the work currently done by humans – but few workers expect their own jobs or professions to experience substantial impacts Pew Research Center

Preservice Teachers’ Perception and Use of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

Personal learning environments (PLEs) are Web 2.0 tools and services by which users’ access, construct, manage, and share educational contents in order to meet their learning needs. These environments enable users to manage their learning according to their own personal preferences. They further promote socialization and collaboration with their broad user networks and interaction facilities. […]

Learners’ Interpersonal Beliefs and Generated Feedback in an Online Role-Playing Peer- Feedback Activity: An Exploratory Study

Peer feedback affords interaction and critical thinking opportunities for learners in online courses. However, various factors prevent learners from taking advantage of these promising benefits. This study explored learners’ perceptions of the interpersonal factors in a role-playing peer-feedback activity, and examined the types of peer feedback that learners generated when playing a role. Participants were […]

Help at 3:00 AM! Providing 24/7 Timely Support to Online Students via a Virtual Assistant

With a dearth of research on human-robot interaction in education and relatively high non-completion rates of online students, this study was conducted to determine the feasibility of using a virtual assistant (VA) to respond to questions and concerns of students and provide 24/7 online course content support. During a 16 week-long academic semester, four hundred […]

Faculty Personality: A Factor of Student Retention

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student retention and faculty personality as it was hypothesized that faculty personality has an effect on student retention. The methodology adopted for this study was quantitative and in two parts 1) using linear regression models to examine the impact or causality of faculty personality […]

Fostering postgraduate student engagement: online resources supporting self-directed learning in a diverse cohort

The research question for this study was: ‘Can the provision of online resources help to engage and motivate students to become self-directed learners?’ This study presents the results of an action research project to answer this question for a postgraduate module at a research-intensive university in the United Kingdom. The analysis of results from the […]

Skills of U.S. Unemployed, Young, and Older Adults in Sharper Focus

The purpose of this report is to present updated and additional results from the U.S. PIAAC household data collection, based on data collected in 2012 and 2014. PIAAC is an international large-scale study of adult skills and life experience focusing on education and employment that was developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation […]

Investigating University Educators’ Design Thinking and the Implications for Design Support Tools

All university educators perform design work as they prepare and plan learning experiences for their students. How such design work is undertaken, conceptualised, and optimally supported is the focus of ongoing research for the authors. The purpose of this article is to present the results of a research study that sought to gain a richer […]