Despite a substantial body of research on the effectiveness of distance education at the post-secondary level, little is known about the impact of online course delivery on the achievement gap. In California, the gap between white and Latino post-secondary student outcomes is significant and persistent, with Latino students overrepresented in…

ICT made real magic and drastic changes in all service sectors along with higher education and library practices and services. The academic environment is changing from formal education to distance and online learning mode because of ICT. Web technology and mobile technology has made great impact on education sector. The role of Open Access,…

Greater academic pressures have been placed on rural schools to provide effective learning that will allow students to fulfill high school graduation requirements and prepare for entry into post-secondary institutions. Rural schools are confronted with many problematic issues including remote locations, limited resources, and shortage of qualified…

Online learning has significantly changed the educational landscape in recent years, offering advantages to both schools as well as students. Despite the fact that some faculty members are not supportive of online learning, researchers have demonstrated that the quality of online learning to be as effective as classroom learning. It has been…

Microblogging tools such as Twitter have been frequently adopted in educational settings to facilitate learning in recent years. Although the original purpose of microblogging tools is to connect with others in a wide network and instantly share what is happening to them with the rest of the world, educators have vigorously attempted to repurpose…

Learning science requires the understanding of concepts and formal relationships, processes that--in themselves--have been proved to be difficult for students as they seem to encounter substantial problems with most of the inquiry-learning processes in which they engage. Models in inquiry-based learning have been considered as powerful…

This study examined the effects of online reading instruction for at-risk fourth-grade students in Philadelphia. The authors used a multiple baseline design to assess the extent to which the students increased their oral reading rate given systematic supplemental online reading instruction. Tutoring consisted of 4 sessions per week with 50-min…

In this article, the author addresses both the costs and benefits of implementing clickers into an introductory political science course. Comparing student responses to a mid-semester survey in both a clicker and non-clicker course, the results show that students have higher satisfaction of the course and instructor, higher exam scores, and feel…

The outcome of this paper is primarily to survey and analyse student interactions with electronic conferencing systems and to reflect on the impact of such a system on the students' learning within an open distance learning context. This pilot study is articulated within action research methodology to generate critical reflection on collaborative,…

This study aims to compare the academics' perceptions about face to face and distance education, beside finding out the contributions of distance education to them, difficulties they experience in synchronous and asynchronous distance education environments and suggestions for possible solutions of the existing problems. The sample consists of 52…

Reference service via instant messaging (IM) has significant potential to benefit distance learners. There has been wide experimentation with IM to expand reference services in libraries across the US, with mixed results. Concern has been expressed that IM cannot provide the same reference experience as face-to-face interactions. One academic…

The authors discuss the notion of Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Building (RCKB) in classroom settings. RCKB seeks to harness the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, envision new possibilities, and to reveal latent knowledge in a dynamic live setting. It is characterized by the notion of rapid cycles of knowledge building activities…

This paper has a dual aim: to situate functionalities among the complex of factors that help shape online interactions and to explore the heterogeneity of audio conferencing and its implications. Following a critical discursive synthesis of the treatment of variables in the literature, attention focuses on the distinctive and diverse…

Effective assessment is vital in educational activities. We propose IWAS (intelligent Web-based assessment system), an intelligent, generalized and real-time system to assess both learning and teaching. IWAS provides a foundation for more efficiency in instructional activities and, ultimately, students' performances. Our contributions are…

The aim of the research is to compare the impacts of telementoring services, delivered using chat with video, chat with instant message, mobile phone, discussion board and video conference on proteges' academic achievements and opinions. Telementoring services, made up with five different instruments, were administered to a group of proteges,…