Teenagers love being social, and Web 2.0 technologies have provided students with new avenues to mingle. Although many teachers may view Web 2.0 technologies (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, wikis, Nings) as a distraction from homework and a potential danger zone in the classroom, it would be negligent for them to ignore the ramifications of…

This paper looks at three areas impacting online education at the community college level. Community colleges account for more than half of all online students in the United States as of 2006. This makes the success of online learning at the community college level a critical part of the growing online learning movement. Using data for…

The existing literature on e-learning implementation is either descriptive or normative and falls short on explaining how managers act in introducing and disseminating e-learning projects in school settings. In this paper, we follow a symbolic approach in order to offer a grounded model for explaining how managerial framing of the introduction of…

Although orientation for online students is important to their success, little information about how to develop an online student orientation (OSO) has appeared in the literature; therefore, the purpose of this article was to describe the entire process of developing an OSO. This article describes the analysis, design, development, and evaluation…

As online degrees and programs increase in number and popularity so does the need for excellence and quality in the programs and courses offered. Becoming more scholarly in online course delivery, especially in the evaluation or assessment of those classes is essential for teaching and learning. This paper explores the pilot of an evaluation of…

This paper uses data gathered from 953 students to investigate how far individuals' preferences for a particular learning style are associated with the perceived usefulness of e-learning. Our findings reveal the effect of individuals' learning styles as well as their gender and professional experience on the perceived usefulness of different forms…

The current research examined the effects of a critical thinking (CT) e-learning course taught through argument mapping (AM) on measures of CT ability. Seventy-four undergraduate psychology students were allocated to either an AM-infused CT e-learning course or a no instruction control group and were tested both before and after an 8-week…

School librarians are experts at so many things: navigating the seas of digital information to find an elusive article, creating interactive forums in which kids learn to collaborate and create, and, of course, critically selecting materials. Some have been reading and reviewing books for so long they can smell a stinker from a mile away or…

Effective training of caregivers is an integral part of top-quality treatment programs for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, traditional caregiver training can be time consuming and costly. The development of Web-based electronic training programs (e.g., "eLearning") may extend training to rural areas, thereby…

This study is focused on the relationships among learning styles, participation types, and learning performance for programming language learning supported by an online forum. Kolb's learning style inventory was used in this study to determine a learner's learning type: "Diverger", "Assimilator", "Converger", and "Accommodator". Social Learning…

This study examines epistemic thinking in action in order to shed light on the relation between students' personal epistemologies and their online learning practices. The study is based on observations of the learning behaviors of 6th-grade students (n = 38) during two online inquiry tasks. Data were collected through think-aloud protocols and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss heuristic evaluation as a method for evaluating e-learning courses and applications and more specifically to investigate the applicability and empirical use of two customized e-learning heuristic protocols. Design/methodology/approach: Two representative e-learning heuristic protocols were chosen…

This article proposes a model of presence in e-learning that is based on Garrison & Anderson's (2003) community of inquiry (COI) model. While the proposed model is similar to the COI model, there are some significant differences. It addresses the notion of presence from a different angle, and characterizes and specifies it differently. The article…

We intend to present the partial issues resulted from the development of the European Project DeInTRA "cooperation for innovative training methodologies deployment in the European Labour Market"--Stage 4: Identification of good practices in the implementation of innovative learning methodologies. This project is included into the…

It is sometimes assumed that teachers in an informed way shall embrace TEL (technology enhanced learning) in their practices. In this article, it is argued that TPD (teachers' professional development) for this purpose can be a part of their engagement in an OLC (online learning community), and we ask the questions--How can professional…