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…

Students' imprudent use of social media might threaten their employability and undermine their emerging professional identities. Most professions acknowledge that any benefits of social media must be balanced against its potential to negatively affect workers' professional lives and the public trust. Professional bodies have developed…

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,…

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…

This paper discusses findings of a study investigating how students, in four online courses, engaged in inquiry-based learning with and without support from a facilitator. The investigation was conducted by analyzing discussions of the online courses using the community of inquiry model. The results of the study imply that students in online…

Social media allows for a wealth of social interactions. More recently, there is a growing use of social media for the purposes of health education. Using an adaptation of the Networked student model by Drexler (2010) as a conceptual model, this article conducts a literature review focusing on the use of social media for health education purposes.…

In an attempt to foster student integration in virtual education programs, several higher education institutions have launched systematic large-scale hand-outs of personal computers, inspired by the "One Laptop per Child" distribution model. However, the level of impact of these initiatives on academic performance is not yet well understood. This…

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…

This article introduces a set of distance education astronomy laboratory exercises for use by college students and instructors and discusses first usage results. This General Astronomy Education Source exercise set contains eight two-week projects designed to guide students through both core content and mathematical applications of general…

John Lester is currently the chief learning officer at ReactionGrid, a software company developing 3-D simulations and multiuser virtual world platforms. Lester's background includes working with Linden Lab on Second Life's education activities and neuroscience research. His primary focus is on collaborative learning and instructional…

Institutions are developing online courses that contain rich multimedia, but research shows there is little difference in student achievement when these types of materials are included. However, many studies report the results of the presence, not the access, of multimedia learning objects. In addition, they do not categorize the multimedia as…

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…