Feedback is essential to enhance students' performance in an online learning environment, although this is influenced by how feedback is delivered. Feedback is an assessment of learning and promotes motivation to the learner. With the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching and learning rapidly shifted to online learning, and the importance of instructor…

As a result of the health and safety concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, in Spring 2020 social work programs nationwide were required to make significant shifts in their instructional methods and field placements. These changes often resulted in faculty members taking on new or additional responsibilities related to teaching and field.…

All too often, courses in higher education tend to teach isolated bits of facts with little effort to assist in learner assimilation of those facts so as to grow knowledge of the world into a more dynamic understanding. To address the need for a capstone research project for students in their master's program and in an effort to create online…

This article describes one school of social work's innovative online elective course to prepare Masters of Social Work (MSW) students for practice with the military, veterans and their families. Developed as part of a university-wide Veterans Initiative, this online course keeps the focus on the student veteran and uses the best practices of…

Instructors are continually looking for means to improve outcomes for students in online courses. This article examines the instructional design of courses to determine if consistent components implemented in a recently established online master's degree program can produce significant student outcomes. The authors detail the construction and…

This article examines definitions, rationales, and calculations associated with higher education performance measures: persistence, retention rate, attrition rate, drop-out rate, and graduation rate. Strengths and limitations of these measures are scrutinized relative to online master's programs. Outcomes of a sample of students (N = 96) enrolled…

The purpose of this study was to understand the demographic and cultural factors that define the student population of the South Texas masters'-level counseling program and to understand students' perceptions of online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses, based on their experiences with these types of classes. This study was s survey research…

Abilene Christian University uses a hybrid governance model. Centralized structures include traditional program departments that supply the faculty and curriculum development for online graduate programs. Decentralized structures include an associate provost and separate student services for the online program.

The 2010 "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill greatly affected the Gulf Coast, and the news media reported information to wide audiences. Students enrolled in an online Environmental Geoscience course in fall 2010 voluntarily participated in a Gulf oil spill survey. More than 92% of the students (N = 77; 83 total enrollment), who were primarily…

iSMART (Integration of Science, Mathematics, and Reflective Teaching) Program is an online science and mathematics integrated graduate program for middle school teachers across the state of Texas. As part of a large design-based research project, this paper describes the initial stages of the design process of the iSMART program for its first…

This paper will include critical information for administrators and faculty in higher education for developing an assessment model for an online degree program. Determining the assessment process for the program before offering courses will ensure a smooth transition into the online environment so that faculty and administrators will know that the…

This article describes an online Master's degree in Family Studies and reports on student readiness for distance learning, student satisfaction, and program review. Evaluations indicate that graduate students in Family Studies are sufficiently prepared to succeed in online course work and that they are satisfied with their program, identifying…

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…