Tutoring involves providing learners with a suitable level of structure and guidance to support their learning. This study reports on an exploration of how to design such structure and guidance (i.e., learning scaffolds) in the Chinese online educational context, and in so doing, answer the following two questions: (a) What scaffolding strategies are needed to design online tutoring, and (b) How should different levels of scaffolding intensity be emphasized in different stages of online tutoring in such educational contexts. More...

This research was conducted to explore whether students enrolled in graduate level courses found some Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategies useful and if they actually used them. The strategies we investigated were presenting course information in alternative formats including PowerPoints with voiceover, screencasts, and videos as an alternative to text resources. In addition, students were invited to submit assignments in alternative formats as well as text. More...

Research on scholars’ use of social media suggests that these sites are increasingly being used to enhance scholarly communication by strengthening relationships, facilitating collaboration among peers, publishing and sharing research products, and discussing research topics in open and public formats. However, very few studies have investigated perceptions and attitudes towards social media use for scholarly communication of large cohorts of scholars at national level. More...

The RISE (Resource Inspection, Selection, and Enhancement) Framework is a framework supporting the continuous improvement of open educational resources (OER).  The framework is an automated process that identifies learning resources that should be evaluated and either eliminated or improved. This is particularly useful in OER contexts where the copyright permissions of resources allow for remixing, editing, and improving content. More...

Massive Open Online Courses have emerged as a popular mechanism for independent learners to acquire new knowledge and skills; however, the challenge of learning online without dedicated tutor support requires learners to self-motivate. This study explores the primary motivations reported by participants in two MOOCs: Fundamentals of Clinical Trials and Introduction to Data Science (n=970). More...

This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and attitudinal dissonance in a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (ABW), designed to facilitate attitudinal learning. The study reviewed a team of six instructors’ use of social presence and teaching presence by applying the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, as well as the establishment of attitudinal dissonance within the announcements and discussion forums. More...

The proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in recent years has generated much debate. MOOCs have been presented as technology-based educational practices, but many researchers question if this kind of open courses really respects some of the consolidated principles behind the education offered at universities. More...

An important aspect of MOOCs is the way students interact with video lectures. Instruction provided through video lectures should focus on ways to increase germane cognitive load, which directly contributes to learning. One approach that may lead to an increase of germane load may be to use video lectures with diverse forms of media, including both auditory and visual aspects of multimedia. More...

This paper presents a review of distance education literature published in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance/Distributed Learning (IRRODL) to describe the status thereof and to identify gaps and priority areas in distance education research based on a validated classification of research areas. All articles (N = 580) published between 2000 and 2015 were reviewed for this study. More...

The article argues that the ongoing usage of audio visual media is falling behind in terms of educational quality compared to prior achievements in the history of distance education. After reviewing some important steps and experiences of audio visual digital media development, we analyse predominant presentation formats on the Web. Special focus is put on recent development of new ways to generate graphics and to create animation sequences, as well as on the video presentation formats used in MOOCs. More...