Variations in group co-construction of knowledge and the extent to which participants engaged in negotiating meaning were directly related to instruction. The authors examined social interaction resulting from controlled variation in instruction using a counter-balanced design in two professional development courses for teachers. Both courses were…

The establishment of an online community is widely held as the most important prerequisite for successful course completion and depends on an interaction between a peer group and a facilitator. Beaudoin reasoned that online students sometimes engage and learn even when not taking part in online discussions. The context of this study was an online…

The authors contend that blended learning represents a boundary object; a construct that brings together constituencies from a variety of backgrounds with each of these cohorts defining the object somewhat differently. The Sloan-C Pillars (learning effectiveness, access, cost effectiveness, student satisfaction, and faculty satisfaction) provide…

The trend of using e-learning as a teaching tool is now rapidly expanding into education. Although e-learning environments are becoming popular there is minimal research on the impact of e-learning on the teachers. The purpose of this study is to develop a tool to measure the impact of e-learning on the teachers' of higher education in the Indian…

Training is one of the basic means of human resources development in business organizations, aiming to motivate employees, to develop their potential and to help them perform better. The end of the 20th century has seen the advent of globalisation and the diffusion of new information and communication technologies. Businesses have to change and…

Since the consent to the Salamanca Statement on special needs education from 1994, e-learning developers have focused on tools aimed to support dyslexic learners. The importance of these efforts is on display every year in the Special Aids exhibition area at the BETT-event in London. ICT and e-learning is now widely used in the special needs…

"Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008" represents the sixth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. This year's study, like those for the previous five years, is aimed at answering some of the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education. Supported by the…

Higher education institutions are confronted with increasing demand for electronic access to educational opportunities, improved academic quality and accountability, and new academic programs that address societal workforce and economic development needs. Collaboration allows institutions to combine resources to respond efficiently and effectively…

Why do nursing and health studies graduate students who are enrolled in online programs decide to withdraw? The qualitative study reported in this paper investigated students' self-identified reasons for withdrawing from an online graduate program in nursing and health studies. The focus of the study was Athabasca Universities' Centre for Nursing…

Historically, nursing education has recognized that writing enhances critical thinking, the basis of the clinical reasoning process. The online learning recently adopted by Nursing involves considerable writing, which may enhance critical thinking more than face-to-face courses. In the study reported here, the critical thinking and writing…

Online polling was examined as a procedure for decision makers to find out how students perceive conditions of learning at their school. Students in Grades 7-12 from eight schools completed online polls about learning on the Internet, time management, and tutoring. Principals favorably evaluated polling as a method for gathering information and…

Research has established that intrinsic motivation has a positive effect on learning and academic achievement. However, little is known about the impact of different technology-supported learning activities on student intrinsic motivation or whether such learning activities significantly enhance student intrinsic motivation compared to traditional…

The purpose of this study was to probe more deeply into the changes that are occurring in higher education as a result of the use of e-learning technology. An interpretive approach using unstructured interviews with leaders of e-learning programs at research-intensive universities was conducted. Based on the findings of this study, we conclude…

While the use of mobile devices for language learning has sparked the interest of an increasing number of researchers in recent years (e.g., Aizawa & Kiernan, 2003; Thornton & Houser, 2005), our knowledge of learners' preferences for the mobile platform and their usage patterns remains limited. Are learners prepared to use mobile phones…

An increasing number of students in the United States are involved in online education, according to research by the Sloan Foundation. By fall 2004, approximately 2.6 million students were estimated to be enrolled in at least one online course, an average growth rate of 24.8% from 2003-04; this figure represents a 5% increase over the 2002-03…