The purpose of this study was to examine effects of using Tablet PC to increase student engagement in their academic work, especially nontraditional students in the field of special education, through technology in hybrid graduate courses. Student achievements were compared through pre- and post-tests on course content areas, pre- and post-surveys…

This article reports research from an ISTE SigTEL award-winning university-secondary school partnership, the Web Pen Pals project, which pairs preservice English teachers in online chat rooms with local middle school students to talk about young adult literature. One goal of teacher preparation programs is to encourage beginning teachers to use…

Conversational technologies such as email, chat rooms, and blogs have made the transition from novel communication technologies to powerful tools for learning. Currently virtual worlds are undergoing the same transition. We argue that the next wave of innovation is at the level of the computer interface, and that mixed-reality environments offer…

The purpose of this research was to examine possible outcomes of developmental students' critical thinking and motivation to read when the online learning community, WebCT, was implemented. My role, in addition to instructor, was that of participant-observer. I implemented WebCT tools, such as discussion board and chat, over a four-month period…

Writing on contemporary culture and social life, sociologists and cultural theorists have been describing new or changing forms of movement, variously described as cultural "flows," "liquid life," or a "networked society." The change in such movements or mobilities of people, media, material goods, and other social phenomena, including the reach…

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a comparative and descriptive study that examined the relationship and effects of incorporating students' learning styles in the design of instruction and the outcome of students' learning, including their attitude and satisfaction. The paper will first explain how the literature on learning…

The University of South Alabama's Baugh Biomedical Library recently initiated a chat reference service targeted at distance education students in the biomedical sciences. After one year of service, the library conducted an evaluation of the chat reference to assess the success of this mode of reference service. Both traditional reference and…

Two sections of an interpersonal skills building university course were observed for the purposes of this matched study. The face-to-face (F2F) section was in a classroom on the Concordia University campus in Montreal, Canada, while the non-turn-taking real-time online section used a Web application, LBD eClassroom[C] designed specifically for…

Very often, when using a chat tool where more than one participant is talking simultaneously, it is difficult to follow the conversation, read all the different messages and work out who is talking to whom about what. This problem has been dubbed "Chat Confusion." This article investigates this problem in debate sessions in an online university…

This paper gives an account of an attempt by an educational developer to support and strengthen an emergent Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger 1998a). This community consists of members of staff associated in different capacities with the Centre for Interprofessional e-Learning (CIPeL), a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL),…

Today's young people--the Net Generation--have grown up with technology all around them. However, teachers cannot assume that students' familiarity with technology in general transfers successfully to pedagogical settings. This volume examines various technologies and offers concrete advice on how each can be successfully implemented in the second…

An instructional team at a public university redesigned a large "core" course in special education required of all undergraduates in a teacher education program. The new design, which blended online instruction with face-to-face meetings, operationalized key principles from Adult Learning theories and Universal Design for Instruction. Students'…

Online and face-to-face courses are often viewed and studied as two distinct worlds, but the social field of the teacher who teaches them may well include both, and both the teacher and the courses he or she teaches may be transformed by the movement from one environment to the other. Susan Lowes explores this two-way interaction between…

In this article we describe the implementation of an emerging virtual learning environment to teach GIS and spatial sciences to distance education graduate students. We discuss the benefits and constraints of our mixed architecture with the main focus on the innovative hybrid architecture of the virtual GIS computer laboratory. Criteria that were…

University CIOs and their municipal counterparts will need to ensure that broadband systems provide plenty of bandwidth for hundreds of different devices used by thousands--and perhaps even millions--of users. Some university WiFi networks are already clogged with too many users. Moreover, universities must somehow provide wireless network access…