Discusses the transition for faculty from teaching traditional classes to online courses, including new pedagogical approaches, assessment practices, group interaction, and student/teacher dialog. Describes a systems change approach being implemented at Southern Cross University (Australia) that includes a collaborative action learning model for…

Explores the faculty time and effort spent in developing and delivering a graduate course for both a distance course and a traditional classroom course. Results show that the distance course did require more time, but suggests hypotheses for future comparative analysis that time may partially depend on instructor experience and institutional…

Presents the development and piloting of a coding system for evaluation of asynchronous Web-based instruction/learning. Processes were guided by four prominent education perspectives and the extended examination of, and survey data from, 17 archived Web-based courses. These served as the bases for the development and application of the coding…

Six research questions were posed regarding the process of developing a Web-based lesson to examine efficiency (time and effort), effectiveness (inclusion of specific instructional components and functionality of specific technical components), and appeal (anxiety, confidence, liking, usefulness and intended future use) of two Web-based lesson…

Discussion of distance learning courses offered via the World Wide Web focuses on the Postgraduate Diploma in Information Management implemented by Rand Afrikaans University (South Africa). Highlights include requirements of a successful Web-based distance learning course; interrelated modules; electronic information sources; easy updating…

Discusses the history and development of distance education. Topics include land grant colleges and agricultural extension efforts; the use of radio and television for learning; use of the Web; lifelong learning needs fueled by a changing job market; infrastructure and user support; the role of faculty; and student responsibility. (LRW)

Business, language and cultural eccentricities are the cornerstones of nation-state sovereignty. Cultural diversity presents a myriad of challenges for academia and business. Cross-cultural frameworks serve to transcend barriers and promote classroom learning to an immersion category. In this paper, notable cross-cultural frameworks are explored,…

The author summarizes and interprets data collected while he was a visiting scholar in a foreign language (FL) department at a large U.S. public research university. This qualitative case study focuses on: (a) the process of developing widely acclaimed Web-based beginning FL teaching software, and (b) the political implications of the development…

To design a new distance education course with an emphasis on student group work, a collaborative effort among the University of Missouri St. Louis Libraries and faculty was established. The collaborative process resulted in a more individualized service experience for library users, and the problems of course construction, using the Blackboard…

This study reports the analysis of the entire content (approximately 135 lessons) of 27 web-based units created by pre-school through 12th grade public school teachers. The investigation was conducted to assess the extent to which participant teachers integrated computer and Internet technologies into the web-based units as tools to foster…

Virtual courses and schools--in which the student and the teacher are in different locations--have become commonplace at the university and high school level. Public, full-time virtual schooling for younger students, however, is still on the frontier of education. About a dozen states now offer full-time virtual schools among their public school…

This article describes a web-based application designed to provide meaningful access to the study of Computer Science to speakers of an African language who have limited experience of using English for academic purposes. Our research is focused upon students of Computer Skills in the Extended Studies Programme at Rhodes University who have studied…

Realizing the potential of online or virtual communities to facilitate teacher professional development requires educators to change their current perceptions of professional development. This calls for educators to develop new images of ongoing opportunities for professional development, based on their needs within an online community of learners…

Case studies are frequently used to prepare preservice teachers through reflection and analysis of classroom situations. Previous research suggests asynchronous online discussions provide more opportunity for reflection and analysis than face to face environments. Online case study discussions of two groups of preservice teacher education…

Higher education institutions in the United Kingdom are subject to a variety of pressures to encourage a more inclusive and broader based student body. This has resulted in an extended range of flexible course delivery patterns for mature, part-time students. This article discusses a pilot to extend the academic year for a small cohort of such…