Hundreds of family life education Web sites are available on the Internet, allowing individuals and families unprecedented access to family life education information. Evaluation is critical to ensuring the quality of and improving these Web sites; yet, few Web site evaluations have been conducted. We formatively evaluated a new family life…

The College of Education (COE) at the University of Hawai'i--Manoa provides a teacher preparation to the vast majority of teachers in Hawai'i. The COE has offered teacher preparation to Hawai'i's neighboring islands in the past, however, the frequency of offerings was severely constrained by geographical distance and traditional delivery methods.…

This article presents the findings of a small study in a single school of a post-1992 university. The study considered the roles of the online academic and ascertained perceived competencies in these roles. The findings suggest gender differences in perceptions of the importance of online roles and gaps between roles and perceived competencies in…

Industry and academia often hold workshops to promote products or disseminate technical information. This study defined workshop-based instruction (WIW) that coordinates student learning in a manner similar to researchers and scientists attending a workshop. WIW aims to enhance collaborative design through presentation, discussion, assessment and…

Mayer's SOI theory suggests that supplements added to designed environments can promote learners' knowledge construction and that different types of supplements will serve different purposes in knowledge construction. Some adjuncts can facilitate selection. Other adjuncts, such as diagrams, might facilitate the organization of important…

A mixed-mode university course, combining online learning and face-to-face meetings, can encourage students to formulate and express their own ideas more than would be the case in traditional classrooms. This article describes an experimental project at the University of British Columbia and explores connections between online learning and aspects…

A university in Buffalo introduced its students to evolution by providing them with information on evidence of evolution, mechanisms for evolution, principles of genetics, selection, adaptation, evolution and sociobiology. This method of teaching with technology enabled students to improve and expand their learning opportunities.

E-learning is not just an application of technology to teaching, but a new business model for higher education. By approaching e-learning as a business model, educational policymakers can begin to appreciate the scope of the integrated technology and services required to run a successful online degree programme or a blended programme that includes…

More and more colleges and universities are utilizing web-based instruction to meet the educational needs of teachers seeking certification in special education, and effective course design strategies for using this technology are needed. In this article we present results form a survey of 54 teachers who evaluated 6 design considerations for…

This study focuses on the prerequisites for successful communication and collaborative learning in a large multinational company as perceived by human resource development (HRD) practitioners who took part in a cross-cultural e-learning course. The participants were Finnish and Chinese employees (n=17) who used an asynchronous web-based tool to…

In the communities dealing with the design and implementation of on-line teaching and training (higher education, government, industry), SCORM is a hot topic these days. The "Sharable Content Object Reference Model" is a standard for the packaging and deployment of Web-based "learning objects," defined by Bob Banks as "a relatively small, reusable…

The World Wide Web presents many opportunities for improving the instructional quality of international business communication related classes by providing access to a large variety of information sources. These sources can be used as supplements to traditional texts, as the basis for specific program assignments, or even as the main focus of a…

Increasingly, colleges and universities are offering online courses using commercial course packaging. One of the most popular courseware programs is Blackboard. This article describes research that employed a two-pronged approach to investigate how education faculty used Blackboard courseware to facilitate student competence in using technology.…

Online education is not for everyone. Although it is becoming increasingly popular, online education has both benefits and limitations. It is certainly convenient, and it allows some people access to education who otherwise might be prevented from involvement. But its impersonal nature and the many resources needed to deliver quality online…

Given the extraordinary interest and growth in eLearning as a learning tool and as an industry, it is not surprising there is lively debate on quality. A research-based and tested eLearning model was used to design and evaluate an online M.Ed. course in order to study factors that influence the quality of an eLearning event. Several data…