Teachers’ and Students’ Experiences of Simultaneous Teaching in an International Distance and On-Campus Master’s Programme
Swedish universities frequently offer campus-based education as well as online courses, a system commonly referred to as dual mode. This paper analyses some challenging pedagogical aspects of a master’s programme in engineering developed and delivered simultaneously online and on campus. Course evaluations, questionnaires, and interviews with the programme teachers were the main instruments used in this study. More...
Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment
Collaborative learning in an online classroom can take the form of discussion among the whole class or within smaller groups. This paper addresses the latter, examining first whether assessment makes a difference to the level of learner participation and then considering other factors involved in creating effective collaborative learning groups. More...
Online Teaching Effectiveness: A Tale of Two Instructors
Upon completion of a graduate level course at the Open University of Israel, one instructor received very high student ratings while the other received very low ratings. We utilized this exceptional situation to perform ad hoc analyses of their course forums. More...
Preferences of Residents in Four Northern Alberta Communities Regarding Local Post-Secondary Programming
The western Canadian province of Alberta has used some of the proceeds from exploitation of its extraordinary natural resources to make available a range of post-secondary training and education opportunities to residents. While these provisions appear comprehensive, this study examined how well they actually suit the express needs of the residents of remote, Northern areas of the province, many of them Aboriginal. More...
Transparency in Cooperative Online Education
The purpose of this article is to discuss the following question: What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education? Social networking does not necessarily involve communication, dialogue, or collaboration. Instead, the authors argue that transparency is a unique feature of social networking services. Transparency gives students insight into each other’s actions. More...
Sage without a Stage: Expanding the Object of Teaching in a Web-Based, High-School Classroom
This paper reports on a study that uses cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to make sense of e-teachers’ activity in a context of high-school distance education. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with 13 e-teachers as well as seven management and support personnel in an organization responsible for the design and delivery of high-school distance education in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. More...
Video-Driven Multimedia, Web-Based Training in the Corporate Sector: Pedagogical Equivalence and Component Effectiveness
The purpose of this study was to assess the pedagogical equivalence, as determined by knowledge gains, and the pedagogical effectiveness of certain components in a video-driven multimedia, web-based professional development training program as compared to a traditional, face-to-face program under real-world constraints of time and limited economic resources. More...
Virtual Spaces: Employing a Synchronous Online Classroom to Facilitate Student Engagement in Online Learning
This research study is a collaborative project between faculty in social foundations, special education, and instructional technology in which we analyze student data from six undergraduate and graduate courses related to the use of a virtual classroom space. Transactional distance theory (Moore & Kearsley, 1996) operates as our theoretical framework as we explore the role of a virtual classroom in distance education and analyze the ways in which a synchronous learning environment affects students’ learning experiences. More...
Effect of Instructor-Personalized Multimedia in the Online Classroom
There is considerable evidence that well-designed multimedia resources can enhance learning outcomes, yet there is little information on the role of multimedia in influencing essential motivational variables, such as student engagement. The current study examines the impact of instructor-personalized multimedia supplements on student engagement in an introductory, college-level online course. More...
Cognitive, Instructional, and Social Presence as Factors in Learners’ Negotiation of Planned Absences from Online Study
Adult learners value the flexibility and convenience offered to them as online learners, and many learners are required to absent themselves from their online classes during courses in order to accommodate demanding schedules. What factors and tensions contribute to learners’ decision-making at these times? This qualitative study considered the planned absences of learners engaged in an online graduate course at a large university. More...
