As Twitter became a popular platform for social networking, educators gravitated to the platform for professional networking. Educators began to utilize the hashtag #edchat to denote their ongoing and growing conversations on education subjects. Educational institutions began to require teachers to participate in the platform or would grant…

This evaluation research study investigated the impact of differences in independent and collaborative teaching models in a blended graduate teacher education program. Using the Community of Inquiry model as a framework to evaluate the student experience in this program, data were collected over a two-year period regarding student perceptions of…

We needed to provide options and to create space for first-year writing courses at a growing tier-one, four-year, public university. Therefore, three faculty members--the program director, the associate director, and a full-time teaching fellow--collaborated to create, pilot, and assess a hybrid version of our writing course. The teaching fellow…

The purpose of this post-intentional phenomenological research study was to better understand connectedness in personal learning networks. The study was situated within the context of the field of learning design and technologies, and more specifically in distance learning. The conceptual framework comprised of theories of motivation, learning,…

This paper compares the perceptions of two groups of students who participated in the first cohort of the WebIT online Master of Science Degree in Instructional Technology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville over a two-year period. The program completers (n=11) are the students who completed and graduated from the WebIT program. The…

In designing online and hybrid courses, instructors should consider structure, student motivation, and interaction (per Moore's 1993 Theory of Transactional Distance). To motivate students to interact and to build course community, instructors may assign student introductions. However, after examining students' introductions in a hybrid…

Many of today's adolescents are constantly engaging with information through texting, watching videos, listening to music, and even writing papers. Learning to interact properly with information through writing presents a challenge for the students because they are employing all of these applications at once and believe that they are multitasking…

In this paper, the author proposes that microteaching may be practiced through online media. The core concept of traditional microteaching is that it is a manipulative technique used to facilitate self-reflective and critical thinking processes while teaching. Preliminary research was conducted with elementary teachers who were participating in…

Gamification has received increased attention in education in recent years, and is seen as a way to improve student engagement, motivation, attendance, and academic performance. While empirical studies on gamification in higher education are showing modest gains in some areas, this data can be difficult to interpret because of the many ways that…

The purpose of this study is to investigate students' feelings of and desire for a sense of community (SOC) in hybrid school counseling courses and to identify contributing factors associated with students' feelings of and desire for SOC. Results showed that the majority of the participants either moderately or strongly desired SOC; however, about…

The purpose of this study was to investigate student learning experiences with online instructional videos. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and user experience talk-throughs, this paper argues that students do not necessarily experience online instructional videos (and other types of course content) as discrete elements, or differentiate them…

The current study explored the interaction patterns of a cohort of international students in a Professional Doctorate of Higher Education program (EdD) in order to establish the extent to which (if at all) the cohort evolved into an authentic online learning community. Phase 1 of the study consisted of a retrospective audit of three out of the…

This study examines third, fourth, and fifth grade students' reasoning that was captured as they engaged collaboratively in a teacher designed inquiry task. This task focused on choosing eco-friendly toys for a fictitious local toy store. Results indicated that students were more expressive with reasoning when they shared their ideas orally, but…

Service-Learning (SL) as an instructional method is growing in popularity for giving back to the community while connecting the experience to course content. However, little has been published on using SL for online business students. This study highlights an exploratory mixed-methods, multiple case study of an online business leadership and…

This paper shares the perceptions of a group of 11 successful online students regarding the value of the collaborative learning community that developed as part of their participation in the first cohort of the WebIT online Master of Science Degree in Instructional Technology program, at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville during 2008-2010.…