Generating true learning dialogue as opposed to a collection of loosely affiliated posted messages on a class discussion board can be challenging. This paper presents the results of a cross-case analysis of nine naturalistic case studies of online classes, looking at how activity design and facilitation factors affected various dimensions of…

This longitudinal study evaluated the amount and type of interaction and interpersonal content in messages posted by online graduate students in small group asynchronous forums. It also assessed the relationship between interpersonality and interactivity. To achieve this, a new coding scheme was developed to categorize the content of online…

The principal concern of this paper is the implication of the increasing diversity of higher education provision in South Africa for equity of access and opportunity for historically disadvantaged social groups, high-quality provision, and social and economic responsiveness in distance higher education. This diversity is signalled by a variety of…

Following initial scepticism, the growth and developments within distance education in India have been tremendous. This paper records those developments in one of the largest distance education systems in the world with regard to its contribution to national development. The paper also examines curricular programmes, access and equity, media and…

An important touchstone of distance education has been to contribute to the development of individual learners whatever their life circumstances. The first half of the article provides an overview of this contribution and of the understanding and awareness that has been developed about distance learners in their individual learning contexts. The…

A number of issues in contemporary distance education are reviewed from the perspectives of distance education as practice and as a field of study. In the practice of distance education, government agendas are supplanted by institutional agendas, the clientele shifts from undergraduate second-chance learners to fee-paying postgraduates, and the…

Distance education as a field of educational endeavor is at a crucial juncture in its historical development. The notion of learning at a distance has gained wide acceptance across the developed world. Instructors, physically and temporally separated from learners using newly emerging information and communication technologies, are widespread.…

Distance education has grown rapidly in the United States in recent years. Both private- and public-sector organizations have embraced the practice of reaching their clients, employees, and students at a distance via new technologies afforded them by the telecommunication and computer nexus. Distance education is grounded on technology, and its…

This study investigated the kinds of dialogic behavior engaged in by students while studying a difficult physics course at the Open University, UK. Research objectives were twofold: (1) to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties that emerged while reading the…

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that affect students' participation in the online learning environment (OLE) for distance learning students of mathematics at the Open Learning University of Hong Kong (OUHK) and to find out the suggestions that can improve students' use of the OLE. A questionnaire was designed to survey to…

In this article we discuss findings from a case-study related to the distance education of teachers of Italian as a second/foreign language. This case-study has examined interactions among teachers during their discussions in a web-forum exploiting the model of content analysis proposed in the "Practical Inquiry Model" by Garrison, Anderson, and…

Much has been written about the promise of online learning environments for higher education, and there is a rapidly growing body of research examining the nature of learning and interaction in such courses. This article presents a discourse analysis of an interactive, text-based, online, graduate education course, designed and taught according to…

In this article, I describe findings from a study of the perceptions of course developers and electronic teachers on the principles of effective asynchronous web-based content design for secondary school students. Through interviews, participants' perceptions of various web-based components and instructional strategies, and the effectiveness of…

On April 1, 1983, thirteen "enthusiastic, daring, creative and resourceful" (Landstrom, 1993, p. 113) Canadian distance educators who were attending an international conference on telecourses gathered in a hotel room in Washington DC to socialize. They left that evening with a dream: a Canadian distance education association. Now, after the…

This study examined how intellectual openness affected the extent to which students engaged in the processes of critical thinking in computer-supported collaborative argumentation (CSCA). This study found: a) indications of differences in the number of personal rebuttals posted in reply to direct challenges between more versus less open students…