Several recent issues and trends in online education have resulted in consolidation of efforts for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), increased Open Educational Resources (OER) in the form of asynchronous course repositories, with noticeable increases in governance and policy amplification. These emerging enrollment trends in alternative online…

89% of colleges and universities in the United States offer online courses and of those institutions 58% offer degree programs that are completely online (Parker, Lenhart & Moore, 2011).Providing online student services is an important component of these distance programs and is often required by accrediting bodies. Health and wellness…

Administrators in higher-education institutions are faced with an often-conflicting landscape of laws, court cases, adopted practices, rules of thumb, and folk wisdom related to copyright concerns on their campuses. Ask any ten faculty member and receive ten different responses about what constitutes fair use, who owns content created for courses,…

With the growing demand for quality online education in the US, developing quality online courses and online programs, and more importantly maintaining this quality, have been an inevitable concern for higher education institutes. Current literature on quality assurance in online education mostly focuses on the development of review models and…

This paper outlines the strategies employed by the Graduate Programmes Department of the University of the West Indies Open Campus to build capacity among academic staff to facilitate their transition to online teaching and learning. The strategies covered relate to course development and delivery, including activities that emerge at the interface…

As with most states, Arkansas is experiencing substantial growth in the delivery of academic programs and courses by distance learning provided by institutions of higher education. At Arkansas State University faculty have adhered to the need of students and developed a completely online certification and master's program in Educational…

This paper explores the use of instructor verbal immediacy behaviors for on-line classes. Specifically, it demonstrates how instructor verbal immediacy behaviors found in face-to-face classes can also be displayed for on-line classes. It is argued that self-determination theory describes identification of the student as an important role in the…

The course design and development process (often referred to here as the "production process") at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU-Worldwide) aims to produce turnkey style courses to be taught by a highly-qualified pool of over 800 instructors. Given the high number of online courses and tremendous number of live sections…

Distance education strategies for remotely deployed, highly mobile, or institutionalized populations are reviewed and critiqued. Specifically, asynchronous, offline responses for special military units, Native Americans on remote reservations, prison populations and other geographically, temporally or technologically isolated niche populations are…

Assessment is an important part of distance education (DE). As class sizes get larger and workloads increase, the IT infrastructure and processes used for DE assessments become more of an issue. Using the BS ISO/IEC 23988:2007 Standard for the use of technology in the delivery of assessments as a guide, this paper describes a rational approach to…

Higher education institutions are increasingly looking to online education as a means to broaden their market reach, increase student enrollments and ultimately realize increased tuition revenue. Many institutions, however, find that they have insufficient infrastructure resources to launch one or more fully online learning programs. A small…

The function of leadership is to create a vision for the future, establish strategic priorities, and develop an environment of trust within and between organizations. Great leadership is a process; leadership involves motivational influence, leadership occurs in groups, and involves a shared vision (Northouse, 2010). Instructional designers are…

This paper examines the leadership roles of distance learning administrators (DLAs) in light of the demand and need for value and quality in educational distance learning programs and schools. The author explores the development of distance learning using available and emerging technologies in relation to increased demand for education, training,…

The traditional and most highly utilized manner of instruction in the online Certification Course focuses on training instructors to teach a pre-designed course with common features. This model limits instructional options for faculty to those which are available in the course. Faculty who are accustomed to academic freedom and autonomy may not be…

This pilot study was conducted in order to explore factors that facilitate and inhibit the teaching of online courses from an administrative perspective. A random sample of community college and public and private universities was selected, and administrators working closely in online education were invited to participate. A qualitative…