Purpose: This study leverages social network analysis (SNA) to visualise the way students interacted with online resources and uses the data obtained from SNA as features for supervised machine learning algorithms to predict whether a student will successfully complete a course. Design/methodology/approach: The exploration and visualisation of the…

This bibliometric study investigates the evolution and trends in quality assurance in distance higher education (QADHE) through a comprehensive analysis of Scopus-indexed publications spanning from 1993 to 2024. The research aims to address several critical aspects, including publication trends, international collaboration networks, influential…

Offering education by distance provides an important sociological tool for equalising opportunities in developed nations. However, for developing nations and more particularly some of the least-developed countries in the world, it has the potential to play a much larger role in providing both basic and advanced educational opportunities and,…

Previous studies in higher education have found that a considerable number of students do not access feedback. Here, we use assessment system data on nearly 300,000 assignment submissions to statistically analyze demographic and timing factors leading to lower likelihood of feedback collection. The most significant factors were student…

The learning management system (LMS) is claimed to be a crucial strategy for creating successful e-learning and teaching methods, enhancing students' learning satisfaction and achieving academic outcomes. Although the Indonesia Open University has implemented e-learning innovation through LMS in higher education, it has not gained popularity.…

COVID-19 marked the next year with unprecedented death tolls, millions of infected people, and the closure of almost all activities, including education. The UN 2020 report highlights that this pandemic has caused the largest disruption of education in history with a near-universal impact on learners and teachers around the world. A total lockdown…

This article tackles a critical question:'to what extent can online higher education (HE) be open and innovative at the same time?' To provide a more comprehensive answer to the question, the author takes up a notion of discourse and situates the analysis in a specific online HE setting: Athabasca University (AU), Canada. In this article, the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to articulate how the user experience (UX) approach was initiated and integrated into the centre's scope of operations with the objective of improving the e-learning layout on the D2L learning management system (LMS). One of the most effective ways to collect user feedback has historically been to evaluate…

Student persistence in the first year of studies is a crucial concern in online higher education. Recent accelerated growth in online programs due to the COVID pandemic has increased concerns over higher dropout rates, which are often connected to students' time challenges--time poverty, juggling multiple commitments, and fitting studies into busy…

This paper reports on the use of feedback as part of a tuition strategy applied in a distance design course at The Open University in the United Kingdom. A blended feedback model (audio and summary text) was compared to the existing written-only feedback model in terms of student attainment, use, and perception. Comparison of feedback models…

The Open University (OU) has around 1800 students studying in prisons (Students in Secure Environments, 2019) with no internet access. They study offline with no access to the OU library's online resources. This case study explores the student volunteer scheme introduced to help students in prison to indirectly access online library resources. It…

Increasingly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an impact on distance-based higher education, where it is revealing multiple ethical issues. However, to date, there has been limited research addressing the perspectives of key stakeholders about these developments. The study presented in this paper sought to address this gap by investigating…

During the war, a significant number of Ukrainian universities were tragically destroyed, while others were relocated. The challenging wartime circumstances in which universities operate in Ukraine have increased the use of distance education. University management and academic staff agree that the quality of services offered hinges on the…

Internationalization of higher education (HE) has increasingly been a subject of interest among scholars, due to developments in the field, such as increased student and staff mobility, inter-university research and teaching partnerships, and rapid technological advancements. Internationalization efforts have mainly focused on the recruitment of…

This study seeks to examine University students' perspectives on the use of interactive presentation technologies (namely Classpoint) in order to foster an interactive learning environment and enhance motivation during remote learning. The sample consisted of 66 students who were currently enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programmes at Arab…