The US economic downturn has resulted in many professionals, job seekers, and high school graduates heading back to school to develop new skills, but fewer of these students can afford a conventional four-year college education today. Community and technical colleges typically charge tuition fees that are less than half of those at public…

Online education is a modality of teaching that has proliferated throughout higher education in such a rapid form and without any guidelines that its quality and merit is largely unknown, hotly debated, and still evolving. Institutions have used online education as a method of reducing costs and increasing enrollments and students have flocked to…

Over the past decade, online courses and entire online degree programs have been made available, serving millions of students in higher education. These online courses largely have been designed and taught using the theoretical concepts and practical strategies of Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN). During 2003-04, approximately two million…

In an online class, it's not unusual to never see a teacher or classmates face-to-face. It's not unusual to interact with an instructor and classmates through discussion boards or e-mail and to get information through online documents and presentations rather than live lectures. In the spring of 2009 students in the online class "Warcraft:…

This article examines the relationship between the use of online tutoring sessions and student success in developmental writing courses. The results suggest a statistically significant difference between the success rates, as measured by course grades, of those students who use the tutoring service and those who do not, thus suggesting the…

In addition to experiencing the generic quality and cost problems faced by all colleges and universities, community colleges face problems particular to their student populations. They need to design more flexible schedules for working adult students, create a greater sense of community or engagement for commuting students, address the special…

Is tutoring online more than just email? Two yearlong studies explored tutoring online in two different modes. One, from Atlantic Community College in New Jersey, looked at asynchronous (not real time) tutoring online using a discussion board. The other, at Pima Community College in Arizona, used synchronous (real time) online software. The…

Web-based, e-learning classes, or online classes that use a proprietary course management system such as Blackboard, are an increasingly prominent part of higher education, particularly in community colleges. In fact, more than three-quarters of community colleges now offer the same course in face-to-face and online modes. And community colleges…

For the thirty-sixth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…