This study investigates how students perceive and use collaborative technologies while also examining the meanings students assign to both collaboration and technology. A qualitative inductive analysis of students' assignments in a professional communication course demonstrates that students use technology to collaborate for its Accessibility,…

Online environments increasingly are becoming a part of our schools. While online education holds tremendous promise--offering viable and attractive options for advancing student skills, increasing access, and potentially lowering the cost of educational services--there is little research on the efficacy of online instruction for students with…

Social presence theory is a central concept in online learning. Hundreds of studies have investigated social presence and online learning. However, despite the continued interest in social presence and online learning, many questions remain about the nature and development of social presence. Part of this might be due to the fact that the majority…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to determine the effects of vowel identity and temporal onset asynchrony on identification of vowels overlapped in time. Method: Fourteen listeners with normal hearing, with a mean age of 24 years, participated. The listeners were asked to identify both of a pair of 200-ms vowels (referred to as…

Online forums (synchronous and asynchronous) offer exciting data opportunities to analyze how people influence one another through their interactions. However, researchers must address several analytic difficulties involving the data (missing values, nested structure [messages within topics], non-sequential messages), outcome variables (discrete…

This study explored the impact of role-playing on the quality of peer feedback and learners' perception of this strategy in a case-based learning activity with VoiceThread in an online course. The findings revealed potential positive impact of role-playing on learners' generation of constructive feedback as role-playing was associated with higher…

The purpose of this study was to investigate instructor participation in asynchronous discussions through an in-depth content analysis of instructors' postings and comments through the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework (Garrison et. al, 2001). We developed an analytical tool based on this framework in order to better understand what instructors…

As e-learning is evolving into a mainstream, widespread practice, adopted by higher education institutions worldwide, much effort is geared towards the articulation of models and strategies for implementing e-learning in formal education settings. In the field of pre-service teacher education, a rising challenge is to equip the "21st century…

Distance learning programs in higher education are evolving into the preferred model for how we educate learners in the 21st century. The traditional role of an instructor was focused on creating an effective learning environment based in a physical classroom setting. In this decade, institutions are educating and training online instructors to a…

It might be said that attitudes impact success directly in web-based teaching and timely and appropriate fulfillment of learners' expectations bear utmost significance for their success. From this perspective a properly designed web supported teaching application can provide positive contribution as well to learners' attitudes towards web…

A pilot program to provide real-time library webcasts to Regis University distance students using Adobe Connect software was initiated in fall of 2011. Previously, most interaction between librarians and online students had been accomplished by asynchronous discussion threads in the Learning Management System. Library webcasts were offered in…

Question answering systems have frequently been explored for educational use. However, their value was somewhat limited due to the quality of the answers returned to the student. Recent question answering (QA) research has started to incorporate deep natural language processing (NLP) in order to improve these answers. However, current NLP…

"Collaborative video annotation" (CVA) allows multiple users to annotate video and create a discussion asynchronously. This dissertation investigates 14 small-group CVA discussions held on YouTube in a pre-service teacher education course. Fourteen groups of 6-12 pre-service teachers (141 total) participated. Five of these groups (48…

While e-mail remains the official method of communication on most campuses, colleges are expanding their presence in the virtual world, trying to reach students where they hang out. But without careful planning, that can lead to a scattershot approach as new platforms keep popping up and students' attention becomes increasingly dispersed. The…

Middle and secondary schools have increasingly offered distance-learning classes as a means of meeting diverse student needs and curriculum requirements while using instructional and budget resources efficiently. Little emphasis has been placed on the readiness of students to participate and succeed in these less conventional learning…