Background: Video conferencing technology has moved online education into a new stage of real-time video interaction. However, shortcomings such as students' lack of concentration and substantive engagement during video conferencing greatly limit the improvement of online learning effectiveness. According to social presence theory and the…

Background Study: Asynchronous online discussions are vital venues for collaborative knowledge construction. However, the lack of appropriate instruction designs poses challenges in promoting deep and substantive engagement with the core subject matter. This paper explores how to enhance adult students' knowledge construction in the context of…

Background: Social annotation (SA) allows users to collaboratively highlight important texts, make comments and discuss with each other on the same online document. This would not only accelerate and deepen learners' cognitive understanding of information, but also help build a sense of rapport, which is critical especially because of the…

Background: Deep discussions play an important role in students' online learning. However, researchers have largely focused on engaging students in deep discussions in online asynchronous forums. Few studies have investigated how to promote deep discussion via mobile instant messaging (MIM). Objectives: In this study, we applied learning…

Background: Learning to use software using screencast videos with worked examples in the corresponding practice files presents a classic split-attention problem that requires learners to mentally integrate information from the video with a target application. While there is evidence that splitting attention either temporally or spatially adversely…

Background: Students often show unfavourable attribution: they attribute poor school performance to stable factors such as lack of ability and good school performance to variable factors such as effort. However, attribution can be influenced by individualized digital re-attributional feedback leading to positive motivational effects and higher…

Background study: Although the number of computer-based instruction has increased drastically, the understanding of how design features of learning modality can affect learning remains incomplete. This partly stems from studies' heavy focus on modified output. Therefore, how interactive nature of computer-mediated learning feeds into learning is…

Project-based learning (PjBL) engages students in knowledge acquisition, application, and construction through artefact development. Based on the Community of Inquiry framework, this study characterized college students' social and cognitive presences in online PjBL and examined how presence was related to their academic performance. Twenty-four…

Background: As educational institutions increasingly operate as multicultural hubs, leaders must navigate the complexities of cultural differences, language barriers and diverse learning styles in digital environments. These challenges are amplified by the lack of non-verbal cues and the asynchronous nature of online communication, which can lead…

Background: Virtual reality can be a useful substitute to improve nursing education outside of the hospital setting. In the wake of COVID-19, an opportunity to compare a virtual reality activity for nursing students in the traditional classroom and in an online environment took place. Objectives: The goal of this study was to examine the effects…

This exploratory study focuses on the design and evaluation of teaching analytics that relate social learning structure with performance measures in a massive open online course (MOOC) prototype environment. Using reflexive analysis of online learning trace data and qualitative performance measures we present an exploratory empirical study that:…

Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self-directed, and other educational sectors. A theoretical and historical analysis of these media in the light of earlier media transformations, however, helps to situate and qualify this…

This study presents a new perspective to facilitate learner-centred weblog evaluation, based on content attractiveness, blogging support, and the value-added service construct. A mixed method, combining fishbone diagram, fuzzy logic techniques, and the analytic hierarchy process, was conducted to identify further the criteria that attract bloggers…

The introduction of digital literacy practices has created a tension in academia, with many academics challenging the view that critical thinking can be fostered on social networks. A quasi-experimental study was conducted on two sections of university-level writing classrooms to determine if there were meaningful differences in the quality of…

Blogs have been increasingly used to supplement traditional classroom lectures in higher education. This paper explores the use of blogs, and how student attitudes towards online peer interaction and peer learning, as well as motivation to learn from peers, may differ when using the blog comments feature, and when students are encouraged to read…