Facilitation is a key factor in ensuring the success of class discussions. Traditionally, instructors are the ones who assume the role of facilitators in discussions. Online learning environments open opportunities for students to assume the role of facilitators. In well-designed online learning communities, spontaneous facilitation would likely…

Widening participation has increased in emphasis in Higher Education over recent years. While there has been some progress in making higher education more accessible to students who have traditionally been excluded, widening participation is still being described as one of the major challenges facing Higher Education Institutions. Likewise…

In this paper, we present the course called "New Media in Education and Research", which employs a blended learning approach. This course is a part of a new bachelor's programme "Natural Sciences in the Information Society" that is in place in TU Berlin. The main goal of this course is to provide the students with the…

Given the crucial role played by universities in a knowledge-based society, understanding how and under what conditions online learning (OL) can improve access to graduate studies is of the highest importance to today's growing global economy. Over the past decade, phenomenal advances have been made in the application of communication and…

This article examines a variety of work currently going on across the country in newly created hybrid spaces to more closely connect campus courses and field experiences in university-based preservice teacher education. It is argued that the old paradigm of university-based teacher education where academic knowledge is viewed as the authoritative…

Although previous studies have identified various influences on course website effectiveness, the evaluation of the relative importance of these factors across different online learning experience groups has not been empirically determined. This study develops an evolution model that integrates triangular fuzzy numbers and analytic hierarchy…

In this paper, the special needs/requirements of disabled students and cost-benefits for applying blended learning in Personalized Educational Learning Environments (PELE) in Higher Education are studied. The authors describe how blended learning can form an attractive and helpful framework for assisting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D-HH) students to…

This research study was an investigation of current faculty development practices for alternative delivery systems. Attention was given to faculty development in general as well as specific facets of faculty development for alternative delivery systems. Future or intended faculty development practices were pursued, along with factors that…

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided…

For quite some time, the promise of 21st century tools in schools has been a focus of the education community. In too many schools, however, there haven't been major changes in the way in which students learn. But change is coming, and it is apparent in the success of many virtual high schools. There's no question that the United States is…

In this comment article, the author elaborates on three significant issues that Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009) identified but did not explore. First, the author discusses the need for research on the impact that youth's immersion in a digital world may have on metacognitive and social skill development. Then teacher learning with the Web is…

Chinese classrooms, whether on school grounds or online, have long suffered from a lack of interactivity. Many online classes simply provide recorded instructor lectures, which only reinforces the negative effects of passive nonparticipatory learning. At Shanghai Jiaotong University, researchers and developers actively seek technologic…

The Provost at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York requested that a new college committee investigate the feasibility of creating and offering blended courses along with the typical face-to-face courses and the fully online courses. An instructional design model is used to discuss and analyze one faculty member's journey through the…

Over just the past decade, online learning at the K-12 level has grown from a novelty to a movement. Often using the authority and mechanism of state charters, and in league with home schoolers and other allies, private companies and some state entities are now providing full-time online schooling to a rapidly increasing number of students in the…

For the past eight years, the Babson Survey Research Group has conducted surveys of higher education institutions on their attitudes, beliefs, and practices concerning online education. This current report is a new analysis of this collection of data, focusing on the role of online education among private-sector colleges and universities. For the…