"Continuous partial attention" is a term that was coined in the late 1990s, to describe the increasingly dispersed nature of attention in online environments. The purpose of this article is to describe the concept, discuss its implications for online learning, and propose a new agenda for research in what has been called "the Age of Interruption."

Knowledge is like food and drink, a necessity of life, the motor of the economy, and a precondition for any social activities. While considering these facts, one cannot fail to notice that education and agriculture have a lot in common. This article reflects on the parallels between agriculture and education. While agriculture started modernizing…

Student motivation is an important factor for the successful completion of an e-learning course. Detecting motivational problems for particular students at an early stage of a course opens the door for instructors to be able to provide additional motivating activities for these students. This paper analyzes how the behavior patterns in the…

Across Colorado, manufacturing employers forecast an on-going need not only for workers who are interested in career opportunities but who are prepared to enter the advanced manufacturing industry with the necessary high-tech skills. Additionally, employers report concerns about replacing retiring workers that take with them decades of…

Rapid growth of the volume of interactive questions available to the students of modern E-Learning courses placed the problem of personalized guidance on the agenda of E-Learning researchers. Without proper guidance, students frequently select too simple or too complicated problems and ended either bored or discouraged. This paper explores a…

Faculty who offer university-level technical courses through e-Learning environments must surmount several difficult challenges. Traditionally, learning in technical courses takes place through real-time interactions between instructor and students in the course of solving actual problems--a form of activity that is not possible in asynchronous…

In the complex practice of today's blended learning, educators need to be able to evaluate both online and face-to-face communication in order to get the full picture of what is going on in blended learning scenarios. The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and feasibility of a practical instrument for analysing face-to-face…

The research field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) includes a large variety of approaches which present significant theoretical and methodological differences. This diversity complicates the articulation of the knowledge that is produced within this investigative framework. The paper addresses this problem from a dialectic…

This empirical research surveys first year tertiary business students across different campuses regarding their perceived views concerning traditional, blended and flexible instructional approaches. A structural equation modeling approach shows traditional instructional modes deliver lower levels of student-perceived learning quality, learning…

With the increasing importance and rapid growth of online courses, diversification of the student population, and the growing concern over retention rates, exploration of learner online participation and possible relationships with motivation and achievement behaviour is becoming increasingly relevant in higher education. Previous studies (Gerber,…

This article discusses an action research study using a wiki as a course platform for teaching and learning Home Economics in secondary schools. A secondary Home Economics teacher observed that dessert recipes were too wordy and that students generally felt bored and were not eager to read them in full. To improve his teaching effectiveness, the…

More than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund analyst--explains how he began tutoring his cousins in math by posting short lessons for them on YouTube. Other people began watching the lessons and sending Khan adulatory notes.…

This article reports on a survey of more than 2,300 students and 250 staff members conducted at the University of Tasmania as part of a wider review of e-learning practice, demand and capacity which aims to improve planning, decision-making and the quality of the online experience of students and staff. Data was collected on access to technology,…

Online education is no longer a peripheral phenomenon in higher education: over one-third of faculty members have taught or developed an online course. As institutions of higher education expand their online education offerings, administrators need to recognize that supporting faculty members through the use of incentives and through effective…

The present study, aimed at revealing the views of elementary school gifted students about the roles and behaviors of their teachers in class as well as about the in-class roles and behaviors that they expect from an ideal teacher with respect to different variables. Another question in the study was directed to determine students' views about…