This study examined participants' learning experiences in the context of a six-week massive open online course (MOOC) in journalism with five thousand students from 137 countries. Three research questions were asked: (1) Who are the students and why are they enrolled in this MOOC?, (2) How much time have the students spent in taking this MOOC…

Very few research papers and case studies have shown successful integration of both Facebook and Moodle in the educational experience of students. This study sought to evaluate the educational benefits of the increasingly popular Facebook--which plays an important role in students' social life as well as their academic life--and to compare it…

This project addresses the challenge of preparing educational leaders for future roles in administration in K-12 schools. Through a project-based learning scenario set in a 3-D virtual world, graduate students in school administration and instructional technology worked together in simulated school teams to develop proposals for integrating…

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,…

The authors conducted a study to examine experiences and preferences of middle and high school students in online learning environments. An online questionnaire was supplied to administrators of online schools, who then distributed the questionnaire to students enrolled in their schools. Topics addressed in the questionnaire included involvement…

Based on the Theory of Transactional Distance and Needs Assessment, this article reports a procedure for quantitatively measuring how close the actual delivery of a course was to ideal, as perceived by students. It extends Zhang's instrument and prescribes the computational steps to calculate relative proximity at the element and construct…

This study investigated how the use of two virtual platforms for learning--a Facebook group and a learning management system course website--affect students' perceptions of learning and participation. The theoretical basis for the research relied on social-constructivist theory. It was found that Facebook, although not originally created for…

This study investigated student interaction, satisfaction, and performance in accelerated online learning environments with the use of an online learning course-management system. The interactions assessed in this study included learner-learner interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-content interaction. The participants were…

The purpose of the Synchronous Interactive Video Conference Distance Learning pilot program was to use emerging technologies to expand learning opportunities for students at an urban public high school. Through grant funding, students were able to enroll in Advanced Placement and foreign language courses through an online learning provider. Using…

This study examined the effects of an instructor's use of video casting as a nonverbal emotional cue in synchronous discussion sessions on students' social presence, satisfaction, and learning achievement. A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the effect of video casting in a synchronous virtual classroom. The research setting…

Because a majority of university students do not regularly read course textbooks, a study was conducted to determine if portable electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) would increase university student motivation to read by enhancing cognitive learning strategies and self-regulation of learning. The participants included 538 university students who…

Student ratings were compared in courses offered either exclusively online ("n"?=?13,416) or face-to-face ("n" = 5,272). Data from 105 institutions were accessed from archived files of the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction system. If a course was taught online, the instructor was less likely to lecture and more likely to use…

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…

The purpose of the research was to compare student performance on Advanced Placement (AP) exams from 2009 to 2011 at Florida Virtual School and to explore student perceptions of their online course experience compared with the classroom-based AP experiences. The data indicated that students performed at levels comparable to the national sample but…

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…