Senior executives who completed the two-year distance education program of the United States Army War College showed significant development of their strategic-level cognitive skills. The Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) survey was administered to seventy participants at the beginning of their graduate program in strategic studies and at…

This study, a naturalistic inquiry conducted between 2002 and 2005, presents an integrated portrayal of issues and concerns of twenty-seven directors of postsecondary distributed/distance learning programs as well as the results of a survey that examined technology utilization and methods in 316 postsecondary schools. The major issues and concerns…

The study that informs this article investigated how online learners' participation in and perception of their sense of learning community contributed to or affected their relationship to their workplace environment and their workplace colleagues. The findings support contentions that, in the workplace, the work itself constitutes the most…

This article presents an interview with John Seely Brown, a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California and a former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)--a position he held for nearly two decades. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such…

With an increasing prevalence of virtual high school programs in the United States, a better understanding of evaluative tools available for distance educators and administrators is needed. These evaluative tools would provide opportunities for assessment and a determination of success within virtual schools. This article seeks to provide an…

This article discusses the impact of patents for computer algorithms in course management systems. Referring to historical documents and court cases, the positive and negative aspects of software patents are presented. The key argument is the accessibility to algorithms comprising a course management software program such as Blackboard. The…

As distributed problem-based learning (dPBL) emerges as an interactive online methodology, it is necessary for instructional designers who want to develop this approach to understand the practices experienced designers of dPBL recommend. This phenomenological study examined the practices that designers of dPBL use and recommend. Ten experienced…

This article presents an interview with Chere Campbell Gibson, a professor emerita in the School of Human Ecology and graduate program in Continuing and Vocational Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gibson shares her years of experience in distance education, discusses her book titled "Distance Learners in Higher Education:…

Communicating the Christian ethos of Christian institutions constitutes a significant portion of the effort and monies of these institutions. Included in the purview of ethos enablers are faculty input and advising, student services, required chapel/worship, ministry formation/field experiences, admissions procedures, and opportunities for…

This article reviews content analysis studies aimed to assess critical thinking in computer-mediated communication. It also discusses theories and content analysis models that encourage critical thinking skills in asynchronous learning environments and reviews theories and factors that may foster critical thinking skills and new knowledge…

This study investigated the differences between demographic, enrollment, academic, and self-directed learning characteristics of completers and noncompleters in online courses at one community college. The study also obtained students' self-reported reasons for not completing their coursework. No significant differences were found in the…

This study examined the use of ARCS-based, motivational mass e-mail messages designed to improve the motivation and retention of students enrolled in an online, entry-level, undergraduate computer applications course. Data from the Course Interest Survey, based on Keller's ARCS model, were gathered and analyzed for two online groups (one treatment…

This article presents an interview with Mark David Milliron, board chair of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, a trustee with Western Governors University, and a member of the advisory board for the University of Texas (UT) TeleCampus. He is also president and CEO of Catalyze Learning International, a private…

This study examined 3 graduate-level online courses that utilized problem-based learning (PBL), considering each course as a case. Beyond describing how PBL was implemented in each case, this study identified what worked (strengths) and did not work (weaknesses) in the PBL and explored how the PBL could be improved (improvements) by collecting…

This study used an online concept mapping activity (CMA) featuring peer learning to enhance learning achievement in concept application. Ninety-seven graduate students participated in this study. The students who participated in the online CMA could later apply the concepts with significantly higher performance and greater fidelity than those who…