The growth in online education has prompted a focus on ensuring students are engaged, persistent, and successful in their studies. A recognized challenge with online learning is developing a community of learners, where students feel connected to their peers and instructor and experience a sense of belonging. In this article, we highlight using…

Belonging, or the feeling of being a valued member of a community, has been linked to numerous positive outcomes in higher education. Although creating a sense of belonging at the campus level is important, equally important is fostering belonging in the classroom. Research has shown that belonging is more likely to occur in classes where students…

Many librarians struggle with how to balance scalable instructional offerings with more personalized instruction for online students--scale tends to come at the cost of personalization and vice versa. This paper will discuss three methods for connecting with online students that range from one-to-one personalization to widely scalable instruction:…

One of the major benefits of the face-to-face teaching environment is that social interaction opportunities are a natural part of the course: Learners meet in the same room for the same allotted period of time each week. This social opportunity is not organic to online courses; therefore, to have this social interaction as a part of online classes…

In this unit activity, students understand that social presence-one's ability to project a personality through computer-mediated communication-is critical for creating an effective online learning environment (Christen, Kelly, Fall, & Snyder, in press; Jorgensen, 2002; Kehrwald, 2010; O'Sullivan, Hunt, & Lippert, 2004). Without…

This report offers a framework for districts to use in their preparation to provide quality instruction through distance and blended models. In the wake of COVID-19, "teaching as usual" will be neither possible nor sufficient to meet students' needs because California's schools have experienced disruptions to each aspect of the…

College counseling clinicians need to understand how students use technology to form, sustain, and end romantic attachments. Students now frequently incorporate aspects of these technologically based interactions, or mediated communications, into counseling sessions and often make important attributions based on them. Heavy daily use of a growing…

Educators know that to engage learners in the enterprise of critical thinking, learner's need to care enough to pay attention, and feel safe enough to take intellectual risks. When interacting asynchronously in online forums, it can become even more challenging to create a space that encourages reflective, integrative, and higher order thinking.…

Using open-ended virtual spaces can be challenging and time consuming for teachers. Fortunately, there are many resources in-world and on the web with general guidelines and specific tools to help teachers be more productive. Most of the groups that host these resources recruit professional members with experience in simulation and game-based…

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:…

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are becoming increasingly popular in online education environments and have multiple pedagogical advantages over more traditional approaches to education. VLEs include 3D worlds where students can engage in simulated learning activities such as Second Life. According to Claudia L'Amoreaux at Linden Lab, "at…