In this study, community college students discussed their experiences with online and face-to-face learning as well as their reasons for selecting online (rather than face-to-face) sections of specific courses. Students reported lower levels of instructor presence in online courses and that they needed to "teach themselves." Accordingly,…

Laboratory science classes offered to students learning at a distance require a methodology that allows for the completion of tactile activities. Literature describes three different methods of solving the distance laboratory dilemma: kit-based laboratory experience, computer-based laboratory experience, and campus-based laboratory experience,…

The aim of this article was to examine the experiences of students who have participated in massive open online courses (MOOCs). The results of an initial Google blog search were narrowed down to a sample of twenty-one blog posts, each of which was written by a MOOC participant. Content analysis was applied to identify and classify blog comments…

A belief commonly held in the K-12 education community is that parents can have a positive impact on their child's learning. However, little research has examined parental involvement in an online learning environment. In this study, researchers using survey data found that generally students and parents viewed parent-instructor and learner-parent…

This study explores the effects of the use of Second Life (SL) as a learning environment on a course's dialogue. An experimental design within groups was used with thirty-seven graduate students for three weeks. Half of them followed the course activities in the official Learning Management System (LMS) of the program, Blackboard Vista, and the…

This study examines online mentor roles and effects with the online mentoring process in computer-supported collaborative learning environments in communities of in-service teachers. Interest in the online mentors' activity encompassed their participation in the online interactions, the influence of their activity on participants' patterns of…

A first-of-its-kind course at The George Washington University was taught entirely online using a self-paced, modular, case-based multispecialty format. Data on student perceptions of the course were obtained through a Web-based survey administered to students who had completed the course. Close-ended questions were analyzed using basic…

Since the 1970s, cognitive psychological perspectives have dominated pedagogical frameworks and models for designing technology-mediated teaching and learning environments. More recently, social learning perspectives have received attention as viable or even desirable frames for research and practice related to teaching and learning, particularly…

This study focused on the effects of peer moderation on meaningful interactions in online discussions. A meaningful interaction was defined as a message relating to a discussion topic, responding to a previous message, and adding substance to the discussion. A randomized-subject, posttest-only control group design was used to test the first…

A case study examined the collaborative experiences of students in an online business writing classroom. The purpose was to examine the same groups of students working on collaborative writing assignments in both a synchronous (real-time) and an asynchronous (non-real-time) discussion forum. This study focused on examining the amount, pattern, and…

This case study examined interaction patterns between men and women and the effects of the patterns on gender participation in online debates. Students labeled messages to identify each message as an argument, challenge, evidence, or explanation when posting messages to the debates. The results revealed no differences in the number of male and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of traditionally spoken linguistic analysis approaches for understanding the nature and outcomes of online interaction. The study took place with twenty-eight elementary school teachers in ten suburban Chicago schools involved in a technology-supported, problem-based learning curriculum…

This article describes a study of the relation between learning style, as measured by the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, and online communication behavior, as measured by analysis of transcripts of computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) interaction using a previously developed tool. Analysis of over fifty-nine hundred sentences, generated by forty…

The purpose of this study was to explore changes in satisfaction with perceived knowledge gained as a function of learner satisfaction with course structure, learner satisfaction with interaction, and technical expertise in a variety of distance learning environments. Using Moore's (1993) theory of transactional distance as a conceptual framework,…

This study assessed the depth of online learning, with a focus on the nature of online interaction in four distance education course designs. The Study Process Questionnaire was used to measure the shift in students' approach to learning from the beginning to the end of the courses. Design had a significant impact on the nature of the interaction…