This article presents an expert's insider's view of the current issues and struggles around state adoptions of Web-based instruction. Back in 2001, when "cyber-charters" began capturing headlines in the education press, a betting person might have laid even odds on whether this virtual school thing was a phenomenon that would last. In…

This paper reports on a study undertaken to analyse learner participation in an online teaching-learning environment in the distance education program of the University of the West Indies. In outlining the context of the study, special emphasis was placed on the role of the course coordinator and the site-based technician in facilitating…

We developed web-based modules addressing fundamental concepts of introductory biology delivered through the LON-CAPA course management system. These modules were designed and used to supplement large, lecture-based introductory biology classes. Incorporating educational principles and the strength of web-based instructional technology, choices…

Whereas existing learning environments on the Web lack high level interactivity, we have developed a human tutor-like tutorial conversation system for the Web that enhances educational courseware through mixed-initiative dialog with natural language processing. The conversational tutoring agent is composed of an animated tutor, a Latent Semantic…

A general Web-based system for use in education, the tutor-web, has been developed for storage and presentation of electronic slides for classroom use, along with reference material, examples and quizzes. The primary novelty of the system is the structured linkage between the various pieces of information, to maintain coherence and focus on the…

This study was designed to determine the degree to which Alabama business education teachers are utilizing distance learning technology in their courses and the extent to which Alabama business education teachers are enhancing their credentials via distance education. Alabama business education teachers were surveyed to determine the degree of…

Performance support systems can play an important role in corporations by managing and allowing distribution of information more easily. These systems run the gamut from simple paper job aids to sophisticated computer- and web-based software applications that support the entire corporate supply chain. According to Gery (1991), a performance…

This paper explores the experience of university students and their professors in their quest to create community in an online course about integrating technological applications into the K-12 classroom. The 15 graduate students in this course studied innovations in instructional technology and sought to develop a comprehensive understanding of…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of navigation tools and computer confidence within a hypermedia environment. Twelve course sections containing 354 undergraduate college students were blocked by ability and randomly assigned to an embedded hyperlink group, a content list group, or a concept map group. Results indicated that…

This study aimed at finding out whether there were significant differences in achievement between English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) freshman students exposed to traditional in class writing instruction depending on the textbook only, and those exposed to a combination of traditional in-class instruction and Web-based instruction in writing. All…

Efforts to enhance learning through peer interaction in an electronic forum are now commonplace. However, facilitation and moderation of such a forum by academic staff can be of limited effectiveness and very time-consuming. The skills required by peer learners to effectively manage such distributed discourse for themselves have rarely been…

An eleven country internal evaluation of the Cisco Networking Academy program across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, revealed a number of issues related to the globalization of e-learning. The Academy program is a 280-hour web-based course that teaches students to install, maintain and troubleshoot computer networks. It was developed in the US…

Computer-aided modelling and investigations can bring the real world into classrooms and facilitate its exploration, in contrast to acquiring factual knowledge from textbooks. Computer modelling puts a whole new "spin" on science education, redefining and reshaping the classroom learning experience. The authors used information and…

Despite the continued growth of Web-based courses, and the great promise of anytime, any place learning, it appears that Web-based instruction fails to produce the sense of "social connectedness" often highly valued in face-to-face instruction. The purpose of this study was to identify problems instructors face that impede social connectedness…

Universities are strategically positioned to serve as a vital impetus in developing pre-professionals' lifelong learning skills. The development of a Web portal, InfoWIZARD, a tool for integrating information literacy and information technology in problem-based research assignments is described in this article. InfoWIZARD includes 20 modules in…