Cultural and symbolic processes--that is, communication--quite frequently play as important a role as structural issues in enabling effective governance.

Online education has become deeply embedded in the offerings of most community colleges. This chapter discusses the challenges, models, and approaches to conducting assessment of student online learning and establishing outcomes for online education.

This study investigates how distributed team members evaluate their own and others' knowledge when they engage in goal-directed activities and seek shared understanding. Twenty-three manager-level employees of a municipal organisation worked as two distributed teams for two months. Their work was supported with a visualisation tool, which was…

The Internet, an exciting and radically different medium infiltrating pop culture, business, and education, is also a powerful educational tool with teaching and learning potential for mathematics. Web-based instructional tools allow students and teachers to actively and interactively participate in the learning process (Lynch, Moyer, Frye & Suh,…

Computer-mediated exchange and interaction have become topics of debate and discussion in the past several years due to the growing interest in synchronous and asynchronous communication and their role in language acquisition, learning, and teaching (Liu, Moore, Graham, & Lee, 2002). This article offers a model for a collaborative course on…

The article documents a two-year interpretive case study of fourth through sixth grade students engaged in a problem-based telecollaboration exchange between classrooms in Laramie, Wyoming, and Monteverde, Costa Rica. Problem-based learning was viewed in concert with a constructivist perspective to guide examination of global issues. The…

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…

Over the past several years, scholars of teaching and learning have demonstrated the potential of collaborative learning strategies for improving student learning. This paper examines the use of computer-mediated communication to promote collaborative student learning in large introductory sociology courses. Specifically, we summarize a project we…

This investigation reviews published empirical studies that attempted to support or to validate transactional distance theory (Moore, 1993). It was found that either data only partially supported the theory or, that if they apparently did so, the studies lacked reliability, construct validity, or both. It was concluded that the basic propositions…

Quality in distance education has been studied mostly from a top-down approach, from administration and faculty to students. This study was an attempt to understand quality through the eyes of the distance learner. This study identified undergraduate and graduate students' perceptions about quality in distance education, examining factors…

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…

The development of innovative and competitive products and mastery of IT&T technologies are crucial for a company's long-term success in the global market. The main flag bearers for development are product developers, but it is questionable whether the existing systems are appropriate for the education of such professionals. For example, one…

Today teacher educators emphasize the need for preservice teachers to develop certain habits of mind (like reflection) in order to be effective teachers. These educators are constantly searching for pedagogical strategies that can help teachers quickly learn, understand, and take to heart important dispositions. This article describes a three-year…

This article addresses the practical aspects of online counseling, including ethics, training, supervision, technology, and competency issues. The authors discuss online counseling's strengths and limitations and present guidelines for what types of clients and counseling psychologists may be appropriate for online counseling. To illustrate the…

Given the current diversity of communication tools at an educator's disposal, what role (if any) does the discussion forum play in the development of a strong sense of community among students? This study sought to investigate the relationship between discussion forum interaction and perceived student sense of community. The results of the study…