Borrowing educational institutions and ideas from the past and from other contemporary education systems is a significant part of the educational history of many nations. Many of the current nations continue to probe the past for pleasure or insights, while some nations seek to erase much of their educational past. Further, an increasing number of…

Around the world we hear considerable talk about creating world-class schools. Usually the term refers to schools whose students get very high scores on the international comparisons of student achievement such as PISA or TIMSS. The practice of restricting the meaning of exemplary schools to the narrow criterion of achievement scores is usually…

For over two decades the State of Ohio has been reforming its education system. This article focuses on the 2006 reform initiatives: a newly elected governor pledged to review and revise its 2002 kindergarten to twelfth grad (K-12) academic content standards and benchmark them to international "best-in-class" measures, given Ohio's need to develop…

The slogan "world-class education" is ubiquitous in education circles. This essay looks closely at who is advancing this idea, why, and where, and the kind of work it is asked to do. Though instruments for determining the world-class status of education institutions were first launched in the 1980s, they have grown exponentially in the past…

Over the past few decades, South Korea has made remarkable achievements in education despite many obstacles. Education, in turn, has played an important role in Korea's achieving both economic development and political democracy. This article examines how South Korea expanded access to education and improved its quality. The article also…

China's recent quest to develop world-class universities is a significant phenomenon within the worldwide transformation of tertiary education. Taking a cultural approach and drawing on empirical findings, this article investigates the emerging Chinese model of the university, considering its key features and contributions to global communities.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the self-reported technology competencies of adult online learners and whether self-reported technology competence was related to students' intent to continue learning via web-based courses. The results indicated that there was no relationship between self-reported level of computer competence and intent to…

The primary purpose of the current study was to examine barriers to the use of distance education and explore related factors in small and low-income rural schools. Data were collected via a telephone survey with administrators or other qualified personnel. The sample involved 417 randomly selected small and low-income rural school districts…

Individual and social benefits accrue when high school graduation rates increase. One approach to increasing graduation rates is to design learning environments that serve students with disabilities through the 5Cs known to increase school completion: connect, climate, control, curriculum, and caring community. Virtual school programs align with…

Changes in engineering practices have spawned changes in engineering education and prompted the use of distributed learning environments. A distributed collaborative engineering design (CED) course was designed to engage engineering students in learning about and solving engineering design problems. The CED incorporated an advanced interactive…

This case study investigated the relationship between degree of online collaboration and quality of group project among four teams. Thirteen participants were randomly assigned to form 4 teams to work on 4 collaborative projects across 16 weeks. Two different data sources of discussion archives and quality of group projects were collected and…

In this study, face-to-face (FTF) and online students' (N = 198) feelings of and desire for sense of community (SOC) in their courses were compared. In support of previous research, FTF students felt more SOC than online students. However, overall, relatively few students (FTF or online) expressed desire for SOC. Additionally, regression analyses…

While web-based courses have had a growing presence in Canadian secondary schools since the mid-1990s, there has been very little study of the transition of high school distance e learners to further study at the post-secondary level. To address this area of deficit in distance education research this article reports on a study designed to examine…

This article describes a design-based research in an undergraduate measurement and evaluation course. The study employed web-based multistoryline case studies grounded on Spiro's cognitive flexibility theory to improve students' comprehension of concepts and knowledge. The findings of this research reveal that students demonstrated positive…

The three-dimensional (3D) virtual world is one of the current innovations that has been discussed extensively as the potential medium for online distance education. Despite the heated discussion on the possible applications of 3D virtual worlds for distance education, empirical studies were hard to locate, and little has been written about how…