Most online courses are offered as "asynchronous" courses and have no real-time contact with students. The Synchronous online alternative provides normal scheduled class time and allows students to login to a virtual online classroom with the instructor. We provide an overview of two different platforms for hosting synchronous classes…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental static-group comparison study was to test the theory of transactional distance that relates the inclusion of synchronous class sessions into an online introductory computer course to students' levels of satisfaction and academic achievement at a post-secondary technical college. This study specifically looked…

According to the 2008 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE): 82 percent of community college students surveyed have part-time jobs (and over half of this group works more than 20 hours a week); almost all (93 percent) reported commuting to campus and 21 percent said they spend between six and 20 hours a week in the commute;…

Guidance and verbal directions, usually received in a face-to-face (F2F) classroom, are often conspicuously absent from online courses. Like their peers in traditional classroom settings, students in online classes need clear, concise instructions (Cramer, Collins, Snider, & Fawcett, 2006). Screen capture and recording technologies, such as…

For the thirty-third year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. This is Volume #2 of the 33rd "Annual Proceedings of Selected Papers on the Practice of Educational Communications and Technology." This volume includes…