The authors make the case that implementation of a successful blended learning program requires alignment of institutional, faculty, and student goals. Reliable and robust infrastructure must be in place to support students and faculty. Continuous evaluation can effectively track the impact of blended learning on students, faculty, and the…

Now that most of the innovators and early adopters of online instruction are comfortably teaching online, many institutions are facing challenges as they prepare the next wave of online instructors. This research study examines how faculty in this "next wave" (the majority of adopters) differ from the innovators and early adopters of online…

This qualitative research study was designed to inform the development and implementation of effective online learning environments by exploring, from both teacher and student perspectives, what constitute effective online learning experiences. The study examined course content, tasks, and pedagogical approaches, as identified by students and…

This study presents three case studies of students' participation patterns in an online discussion to address the gap in our current understanding of how "individuals" experience asynchronous learning environments. Cases were constructed via microanalysis of log-file data, post contents, and the evolving discussion structure. The first student was…

This paper reports on preliminary findings from ongoing design-based research being conducted in the fully online Master of Arts in Teacher Leadership (MTL) program at a small, Midwest public university. Researchers are using the Quality Matters (QM) and Community of Inquiry (CoI) frameworks to guide the iterative redesign of core courses in the…

This paper presents an empirical study grounded in the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson Archer, 2000) and employs quantitative content analysis of student discourse and other artifacts of learning in online courses in an effort to enhance and improve the framework and offer practical implications for online education. As a…

A FIPSE-funded project was designed to provide support and training to community college faculty electronically, and to develop a model to offer innovative, interactive strategies to support their students' academic and career needs. The goal of the mentoring/coaching program has been to support instructors in their online efforts, provide…

Online learning continues to grow, but there is limited empirical research on the personal factors that influence success in online contexts. This investigation addresses this research gap by exploring the relations between several discrete achievement-related emotions (boredom, frustration, and enjoyment) and self-regulated learning behaviors…

In an effort to expand existing research on the barriers of instructors experience in online learning environments (OLEs), a qualitative study was conducted at a large mid-Atlantic university. Six instructors teaching in different OLE formats (e.g., asynchronous, hybrid, and synchronous via videoconferencing) participated in two focus groups in…

This empirical study investigates students' learning choices for mathematics and statistics in a blended learning environment, composed of both online and face-to-face learning components. The students (N = 730) were university freshmen with a strong diversity in prior schooling and a wide range of proficiency in quantitative subjects. In this…

Online learning has become a reality for many students in higher education. Unfortunately, something that has also become a reality is a sense of isolation in online courses, and Moore (1980) has warned that students' sense of distance can threaten their ability to learn. The community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) has…

Online learning may be particularly sensitive to self-regulatory trade-offs between maintaining interest and performance. Undergraduates in online or on-campus sections of the same course rated strategies used to motivate studying for the first exam, and interest after the first exam and at semester's end. First exam and final class grades were…

As the presence of online and hybrid coursework at institutions of higher education has increased, so too has interest among educators and scholars in understanding personal and contextual factors that predict success in different types of learning environments. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations among temporally-ordered…

In this single-case study, small groups of learners were supported by use of multiple social software tools and face-to-face activities in the context of higher education. The aim of the study was to explore how designed learning activities contribute to students' learning outcomes by studying probabilistic dependencies between the variables.…

In a time of change, higher education is in the position of having to adapt to external conditions created by widespread adoption of popular technologies such as social media, social networking services and mobile devices. For faculty members, there must be opportunities for concrete experiences capable of generating a personal conviction that a…