The integration of technology in classrooms is rapidly emerging as a way to provide more educational opportunities for students. As virtual learning environments become more popular, evaluating the impact of this technology on student success is vital. "Exploring the Effectiveness of Online Education in K-12 Environments" combines…

Online learning has steadily become a more integral strategy for schools and districts in their efforts to offer students greater access to the courses they need. Where in the past, much of the online learning activity happened at the state level or regional level, more and more schools are exercising greater control over their online and digital…

The construct of cognitive complexity has played an increasingly important role in studies on task design, which aim to explore how increases in the cognitive complexity of tasks differentially mediate interaction and learning outcomes (Kim, 2009; Gilabert, Baron, & Llanes, 2009; Kim & Tracy-Ventura, forthcoming; Nuevo, 2006; Revesz, 2009,…

Audience Response Systems (ARS) are now being used to enhance learning in various higher education disciplines. With several ARS brands available, it is most important to consider various facets of this interactive technology prior to implementing it into athletic training courses. This article will outline strategies to incorporate this learning…

Some faculty members are reluctant to offer online courses because of significant concerns relative to the impact of such formats on the quality of instruction, learning, and participant interaction. Faculty members from The University of Southern Mississippi implemented synchronous interactive online instruction (SIOI) in the spring of 2007. This…

Put in place to protect the rights of the child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a set of non-negotiable standards. A core principle underpinning the Convention is the child's right to participate fully in social arenas and to access sources of social support without excessive interference. Juxtaposing this is the right of the child…

This article describes a 40-week Computer, Research Skills, and Projects (CRSP) blended learning course designed and implemented at Dubai Men's College. The learning employed a design using socio-constructivist principles in the blended approach to cater to the learning preferences of students. (Contains 2 figures and 1 footnote.)

Amid budget cuts in U.S. public schools, the spotlight is on how to make less effective teachers more effective--fast. The authors describe virtual coaching--in which a coach interacts electronically with a teacher as a lesson unfolds--as a promising way to help teachers with weak teaching skills. Virtual coaching uses online and mobile technology…

Erving Goffman's theoretical framework and concept of face-work has the potential to greatly increase the understanding of interpersonal dynamics in computer-mediated communication realms. This research used an ethnography of communication approach and the concept of face-work to analyze the transcript of an interaction between a librarian and a…

This study identified the problem solving strategies used by students within a university course designed to teach pre-service teachers educational technology, and whether those strategies were influenced by the format of the course (i.e., face-to-face computer lab vs. online). It also examined to what extent the type of problem solving strategies…

In this paper we report the results of a study which investigated the affordances of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) for collaborative learning from a design perspective. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, we conducted a comparative study of the effect of varying representational and interactional design features on a collaborative design…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a user interface for web lectures for engaging with other users while working with video based learning content. The application allows its users to ask questions about the content and to get answers from those users that currently online are more familiar with it. The filtering is based on the…

Despite the spread of reliable desktop audio and videoconferencing facilities, some CMC-based projects still rely on asynchronous written environments, if only because of the temporal constraints of synchronicity (Guichon, 2009; Develotte, Guichon & Vincent, 2010). Yet speaking is usually the skill students most need to improve when learning a…

Although online learning (OL) is becoming widely accessible and is often viewed as cutting-edge, the actual number of regular faculty participating in this form of teaching remains small. Moreover, OL, despite its growing recognition, is often associated with high rates of student dissatisfaction and isolation, withdrawal, and attrition.…

This study examines the effectiveness of a classroom response system (CRS) and architecture students' perceptions of real-time feedback. CRS is designed to increase active engagement of students by their responses to a question or prompt via wireless keypads. Feedback is immediately portrayed on a classroom projector for discussion. The authors…