The purpose of this study is to investigate the problems associated with learner motivation in Web-based instruction, in particular in self-directed online learning environments. This study is interested in identifying and exploring what motivate or demotivate learners from completing a self-directed online course, which have implications for…

Robert Burns wrote: "The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry". This could be considered the motto of most educational innovation. The question that arises is not so much why some innovations fail (although this is very important question), but rather why other innovations succeed? This study investigated the success factors of…

As most any high school or college English teacher can verify, it is the rare group of students that approaches the study of Shakespeare with anything other than a mixture of anxiety over the difficulty of making sense of the plays' language and annoyance that, once again, they will be forced to engage in an activity they find both unjustifiably…

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effects of different types of visual illustrations on learner's learning interest, motivation and achievement, especially in multimedia learning. The participants were drawn from two classes of an "Introduction to Educational Technology" course and randomly assigned to one of the three treatments:…

How did we build a site that has grown to more than 6,000 Web pages and 50 million hits per year--with a few part-time people, with no budget for the first five years, and a minimal budget the next five? We will describe an efficient and effective design process fundamental to our strategy that is essentially a method of disciplined inquiry. Our…

Online teaching and learning is making a significant impact on the fabric of higher education. In particular, online MBA programs have seen a rapid rise in student enrollments in recent years while the student enrollments in traditional in-residence MBA programs are in decline (Hayward, 2004; Lorenzo, 2004). This appears to be due, in part, to the…

For millennia, emotional states have been viewed as avoidable impediments to rational thinking (Ellis & Newton, 2000). Several reasons have been pointed out. The lack of consensus of the definition on emotion that tend to conflict with each other was suggested as a main reason (Price, 1998). Also the difficulty of research methodology such as…

Interest in online education has grown rapidly over the past and will continue to grow. An increasing number of universities are offering online learning (OL) opportunities. Teacher professional development is part of this trend as well. Numerous recent studies of online teacher professional development environments have been published. Most…

This study examined how differences in communication style affect how likely particular types of messages (e.g. arguments, evidence, critiques, explanations) were able to elicit critical responses during four online debates. Event sequence analysis was used to compare the response probabilities for each type of message across messages that used…

The Association for Educational Communications and Technology defines Instructional Technology as the "theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning" (Seels & Richley, 1994). From the above definition, it can be seen that Instructional Technology can be considered in…

Intrinsic motivation can be predicted from participants' perceptions of the social environment and the task environment (Ryan & Deci, 2000)in terms of control, relatedness and competence. To determine the degree of independence of these factors 251 students in higher vocational education (physiotherapy and hotel management) indicated the extent to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of design strategies for promoting students' self-regulated learning skills on students' self-regulation and achievements. Seven strategies for promoting students' SRL are identified through the literature review and applied into the experimental group: goal setting, self-evaluation,…

There is a wealth of information available on the World Wide Web that can assist pre-service teachers in their course studies. Yet observation of students in a technology integration class indicated that students were not able to find resources efficiently or reliably. The purpose of this study was to establish a baseline of what undergraduate,…

This paper expands on a poster presentation about the results of research in PBL in distance education environments integrated in the PBL design model as defined by traditional literature. The results will be laid out as they are relevant to each stage of the process. Research on discrete aspects of its design process is necessary to enlighten…

The rapid growth of instructional technologies has provided college faculty with a vast array of educational resources and learning opportunities (Grasha, 2000; Kagima & Hausafus, 2001). As described in the relevant literature addressing this issue, there are several potential advantages in utilizing instructional technologies to enrich the…