As a long-term trend as well as a crisis-response to the COVID-19 pandemic, online education is increasingly becoming a supplement and /or substitute to face-to-face teaching. Online education has many advantages; however, it also threatens the relational and character-building aspect of education. In this article, we argue that it is incumbent…

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed significant challenges on education worldwide, particularly in areas with limited online teaching experience. The research design is based on constructivism learning theory and the technology acceptance model. A questionnaire was also distributed to a university of finance and economics in China. Structural…

Rapport-building is perceived to enhance engagement, level of gratification, and collaboration, resulting in better student engagement in the learning process. The current study measures the extent to which postsecondary instructors promote a meaningful online environment through faculty-student rapport (FSR) in undergraduate English as a foreign…

Designing courses for optimal level student learning is dependent upon student participation. This study examined one way to encourage further student participation in online discussions. Of specific importance was how to encourage students to read their student-colleagues' online discussion responses: not just a minimum number of responses but…

There is growing demand for online learning activities that offer flexibility for students to study anywhere, anytime, as online students fit study around work and family commitments. We designed a series of online activities and evaluated how, where, and with what devices students used the activities, as well as their levels of engagement and…

Given the rise of social media engagement within society, there are challenges for tutors in blended and online contexts to provide opportunities for social constructivist learning experiences within their institutional learning environments. This article proposes a module approach to teaching, learning and assessment for learners undertaking…

The purpose of this article is to investigate preservice teachers' (PSTs') perceptions about the features that facilitated their learning and engagement in asynchronous online discussions. Participants included 12 PSTs enrolled in an online classroom management course at a public university in New England. Using constructivist grounded theory…

Students in the digital era are habitual of using digital devices not only for playing and interacting with their friends and peers, but also as a tool for education and learning. These digital natives are highly obsessed with the internet driven portable devices and always demand for a multimedia rich content. This specific demand needs to be…

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning literature relates high levels of collaboration to enhanced learning outcomes. However, an agreement on what is considered a high level of collaboration is unclear, especially if a qualitative approach is taken. This study describes how methods of Social Network Analysis were used to design a collaboration…

This paper outlines the redesign of an MSc module to enhance students' engagement and learning through embedding social media technologies into the academic curriculum as a learning and assessment strategy, and in a complementary manner that facilitated and enhanced the achievement of the module's learning outcomes. This paper describes the…

This qualitative study explored the self-regulated learning (SRL) of teachers and their students in virtual social spaces. The processes of SRL were analyzed from 24 semi-structured individual interviews with professors, instructors and their students from five Lithuanian universities. A core category stroking the net whale showed the process of…

Rigorous interaction between peers has been an elusive goal in online asynchronous discussions. Intersubjectivity, the goal of peer-to-peer interaction, is a representation of a higher quality of synthesis. It is the representation of knowledge construction achieved through a synergistic progression from individual contributions to sequences of…

This study investigates whether engaging college students (n = 42) in a knowledge building environment would help them work as a community to construct their collective knowledge of history of science and, accordingly, develop a more informed scientific view. The study adopted mixed-method analyses and data mainly came from surveys and student…

As more and more library and LIS education migrates to the online environment, college and university faculty are called upon to expand their pedagogy. Interactivity has been cited as one factor in attracting and retaining students in online courses and programs. LIS educators can reach outside the online learning management system (LMS) to…

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology has implemented reforms in Japan to promote language education through technology. Blended language learning is a way to fulfill the mandate set in these reforms. Combining the benefits of online and face-to-face learning leads to increased engagement in the target language.…