Online environments increasingly are becoming a part of our schools. While online education holds tremendous promise--offering viable and attractive options for advancing student skills, increasing access, and potentially lowering the cost of educational services--there is little research on the efficacy of online instruction for students with…

Online learning has grown exponentially within higher education in the past decade, especially at community colleges. As online course offerings expand community colleges need to assess student learning in order to ensure quality learning experiences for students and for accreditation purposes. The purpose of this study was to compare the…

Information overload is an issue not only in the corporate world, but also in the world of online education. This phenomenon has a unique relationship to nontraditional students who may lack the computer skills of traditional students. Little research has focused on this particular demographic. Failure to address this issue could result in lower…

The number of incoming community college students, including recent high school graduates as well as nontraditional students, requiring remediation has increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, community colleges are mandated by the state to implement developmental programs to address the diverse academic needs of their students.…

This study used a convenience sample military officers from the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps enrolled in an undergraduate pilot training course but awaiting the start of their program. All participants were 4-year college graduates with a median age of 23. Of the 114 participants, 87% were male and 13% were female. Participants were…

A large number of educational resources is now made available on the Web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. However, the abundance of available content produced at least two problems: how to help students to find the most appropriate resources and how to engage them into using these resources and benefit from them.…

Online social interactions differ from face to face interactions and lack the non-verbal cues leading a learner to procrastinate, decreased motivation, feelings of isolation and high drop out rates. Existing research illustrates a need for social awareness information in online education, and this research studied the impact of the visual presence…

Assessing students in online university courses poses challenges to the reliability factor of the measures being utilized. Some programs have the latitude to incorporate proctored assessments, but this is not always practical in asynchronously structured courses reaching out across a broad geographic region. This paper explores digital audio and…

This paper is a discussion about the basic preparatory steps and necessary competencies for making the transition from a traditional face-to-face to a full online teaching and learning, and it is intended to highlight the required pedagogical roles of an online instructor using an interactive computer-enhanced asynchronous information…

Many of the recent legal decisions regarding public employee expression, particularly in electronic environments, run counter to the culture being facilitated by the Internet. This article uses a legal analysis to examine recent decisions and then considers those legal positions within the context of digital expression. (Contains 2 notes.)

Blended learning has become a meme. While mixing online instruction with face-to-face time is not exactly new, momentum for hybrid learning has been building ever since a Department of Education meta-study in 2010 quietly announced that traditional education simply does not stack up. In that study, online education was determined to be more…

As more courses in teacher education are offered online, it is imperative that we thoughtfully consider how we structure learning activities. This study turned a critical gaze on a common element of online courses--asynchronous discussion. The authors compared two models of discursive interaction--discussion boards versus blogs--to better…

Skills-based learning environments are used to promote the acquisition of practical skills as well as decision making, communication, and problem solving. It is important to provide feedback to the students from these sessions and observations of their actions may inform the assessment process and help researchers to better understand the learning…

This research seeks to (1) implement a model for an inquiry based learning environment using learning objects (LOs), and (2) apply the model to examine its impact on students' learning. This research showed that a well-designed learning environment can enhance students learning experiences. The proposed model was applied to an undergraduate course…

The purpose of this study was to compare the traditional teaching method of Concepts of Fitness (CF) with a teaching method using the Internet as an instructional supplement. Participants in the study were 52 students (27 male, 25 female) from a four-year institution of higher learning. Participants were enrolled in a required, general education…