Purpose: Public libraries play a pivotal role in supporting education and literacy. They provide numerous services, activities, collections and resources for education and leisure. Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) is an international renowned public library that provides numerous services for different users worldwide. E-learning is an emergent and…

Concerns over the usefulness and validity of student ratings of instruction (SRI) have continued to grow with online processes. This paper presents seven common and persistent concerns identified and tested during the development and implementation of a revised SRI policy at a Canadian research-intensive university. These concerns include bias due…

Peer feedback is a useful strategy in teaching and learning, but its effectiveness particularly in introductory courses can be limited by the relative newness of students to both the body of knowledge upon which they are being asked to provide feedback and the skill set involved in providing good feedback. This paper applies a novel approach to…

This article considers formal and informal learning activities in massive open online courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are often broadly positioned as either cMOOCs (based on connectivistic pedagogies) or xMOOCs (based on cognitivistic/behavioristic pedagogies). In a recent "International Review of Research in Open and Distance" article, Anders…

By investigating how educational practitioners participate in activities around open educational practices (OEP), this paper aims at contributing to an understanding of open practices and how these practitioners learn to use OEP. Our research is guided by the following hypothesis: Different social configurations support a variety of social…

In this study, the authors explored identity positioning as perceived by doctoral learners in online, networked-learning environments. The study examined two distance doctoral programs at a Canadian university. It was a qualitative study based on methodologies involving open coding and discourse analysis. The social positioning cycle, based on…

Educators, policymakers, and parents alike are focused on ensuring the academic success of the nation's students. These efforts interact with the expanding use of technology, which affects the lives of students both inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, the role that technology plays in education is an evolving area of research that continues…

Problem-based learning (PBL) courses have historically been situated in physical classrooms involving in-person interactions. As online learning is embraced in higher education, programs that use PBL can integrate online platforms to support curriculum delivery and facilitate student engagement. This report describes student perspectives of the…

The flipped classroom is a relatively new approach to undergraduate teaching in science. This approach repurposes class time to focus on application and discussion; the acquisition of basic concepts and principles is done on the students' own time before class. While current flipped classroom research has focused on student preferences and…

Mobile devices have become attractive learning devices for education. While the majority of the existing research has focused primarily on the value of mobile learning for students, researchers have recently started exploring its potentials within teacher development. The present qualitative synthesis of quantitative and qualitative research aimed…

Placed within the context of rural teaching and learning and the use of new technologies, this paper presents a comparative study of three technological approaches to the presentation of curriculum in schools. Supported by three different research projects in one Canadian province, it highlights three areas of e-learning: the use of video…

Although e-learning has improved in quality, reach and learning impact over the past decade, it can be argued that it has not yet lived up to its potential to transform workplace learning. In the drive to increase effectiveness, interest has grown in blended learning, an instructional strategy that combines the use of web-technologies with more…

What does it take to be an effective online educator? Can those who teach successfully face-to-face be equally effective online? This article details a descriptive qualitative research study of students' perspectives regarding qualities of exceptional online educators. Participants described interactions they had with online teachers they…

With the tuition cost of traditional colleges and universities soaring and education technology advancing, online courses and degree programs are becoming more common. Some critics argue that an online degree cannot provide all the important features of a traditional college education, from extracurricular activities to new professional networks,…

Trinity College Dublin was proud to host, in April 2016, the Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education, with the theme "New Directions in Telecollaborative Research and Practice." Over two and a half days, 150 participants offered 95 research presentations, posters, and "problem shared" sessions.…