13 novembre 2018

IRRODL - Vol 19, No 3 (2018)

Table of Contents

Editorial

Research Articles

Research Notes

Online Course Enrollment in Community College and Degree Completion: The Tipping Point

Recent research indicates that certain students are at risk of lower levels of academic performance in online settings when compared to peers who study only in the classroom.  Community college students have been a population of particular concern.  In this paper, we hypothesize that online course load and institutional quality may impact outcomes for such students at risk for lower levels of degree attainment. More...

Online Hunting, Gathering and Sharing – A Return to Experiential Learning in a Digital Age

Learning through a collective experience by taking part in group activities, such as hunting, gathering, and sharing, has always been a natural, “organic,” and “experiential” process where new skills and knowledge, if benefitting the whole group, are accepted, shared, and propagated. More...

Blended Training on Scientific Software: A Study on How Scientific Data are Generated

This paper presents the results of a research study on scientific software training in blended learning environments. The investigation focused on training approaches followed by scientific software users whose goal is the reliable application of such software. A key issue in current literature is the requirement for a theory-substantiated training framework that will support knowledge sharing among scientific software users. More...

Applying Learning Analytics to Explore the Effects of Motivation on Online Students' Reading Behavioral Patterns

This study aims to apply a sequential analysis to explore the effect of learning motivation on online reading behavioral patterns. The study’s participants consisted of 160 graduate students who were classified into three group types:  low reading duration with low motivation, low reading duration with high motivation, and high reading duration based on a second-order cluster analysis. More...

Goal Orientation and Academic Performance in Adult Distance Education

Research has shown the importance of goal orientation in predicting academic performance for children, adolescents, and college students in traditional educational settings. Studies on this relationship within adult distance education, however, are lacking. To fill this gap, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between goal orientation and academic performance in adult distance learners. More...

Mental Health in Higher Education: A Comparative Stress Risk Assessment at an Open Distance Learning University in South Africa

Universities depend on committed efforts of all staff members to function effectively. However, where occupational demands outweigh occupational resources, challenging work becomes stressful, followed by an exhausted, disengaged workforce. It is unlikely that disengaged university staff will provide adequate care and service to geographically distant and psychologically isolated learners. More...

A Review to Weigh the Pros and Cons of Online, Remote, and Distance Science Laboratory Experiences

The effectiveness of traditional face to face labs versus non-traditional online, remote, or distance labs is difficult to assess due to the lack of continuity in the literature between terminology, standard evaluation metrics, and the use of a wide variety non-traditional laboratory experience for online courses. This narrative review presents a representative view of the existing literature in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of non-traditional laboratories and to highlight the areas of opportunity for research. More...

Design and Validation of an Integrative Assessment Model Applicable to Spanish Universities

The quality assurance of online Higher Education online programmes is one of the great challenges faced by Spanish universities. Regular assessment of these programmes is essential in order to take actions to improve their quality. The said assessment should be complex and include all of the components of the programme, as well as its planning and implementation stages and its effects. The purpose of this paper is to present a model designed to assess the quality of online Higher Education online programmes that includes the assessment of the quality of the programme itself, as well as its continuous assessment. More...

Instructional Delivery and Students’ Experiences with Distance and Online Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics in Nigeria

This paper examines the students’ experiences with instructional delivery (ID) of distance and online learning of undergraduate mathematics in two major Nigerian universities. Purposive sampling was used in the study to select mathematics students from University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute (DLI) and the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). Data were collected through mixed-methods and a one-sample binomial test was employed to analyse the quantitative data. More...