The Wisconsin Master Gardener Program team used the Google+ Community platform to provide an engaging online discussion forum for asynchronous continuing education experiences. Applications of such a tool for volunteer online education have numerous benefits, including the capacity for asynchronous posting, ease of posting, privacy options, wide…

The coronavirus pandemic of 2019 transformed the way that educators, across all levels and disciplines, seek to establish and provide a pedagogically sound curriculum. With the continued need to transform curriculum into an online format, secondary-level animal science instructors have several points to consider if their applied discipline will…

Perusall, a web-based collaborative reading platform characterised by its social annotation functionalities, was introduced in a postgraduate teacher-training language-awareness course in Hong Kong during the shift to online teaching and learning brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Tasks were designed on Perusall to engage the…

A novel technology that employs computer vision (CV) to carry out an automatic titration experiment is presented. The experiment is designed to facilitate understanding of the basics of the CV technology and its application in chemistry among undergraduate students. The standard chemical procedure of titration has been chosen, since it is…

The study investigates the effect of e-learning, blended learning and classroom learning on students' achievement. Two experimental groups together with a control group from Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia were identified randomly. To assess students' achievement in the different groups, pre- and post-achievement tests were used. The…

A pilot program to provide real-time library webcasts to Regis University distance students using Adobe Connect software was initiated in fall of 2011. Previously, most interaction between librarians and online students had been accomplished by asynchronous discussion threads in the Learning Management System. Library webcasts were offered in…

The LMS (learning management system) at many schools for delivering, tracking and managing education relies on TEL (technology-enhanced learning), what Nichols called "pedagogy empowered by digital technology" (Nichols, 2008). It includes the "paperless classroom" in traditional (not online) classes in which faculty and students exchange…

Two critical issues of the typical computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) systems are inappropriate selection of student groups and inaccurate assessment of individual contributions of the group members. Inappropriate selection of student groups often leads to ineffective and inefficient collaboration, while inaccurate assessment of…

The field of education is experiencing a rapid shift as internet-enabled distance learning becomes more widespread. Often, traditional classroom teaching pedagogical techniques can be ill-suited to the online environment. While a traditional entry-level class might see a student attrition rate of 5-10%, the same teaching pedagogy in an online…

Because of the perceived advantages and the promotion of Web-based learning environments (WBLEs) by commercial interests as well as educational technologists, knowing how to develop and implement WBLEs will probably not be a choice, but a necessity for most educators and trainers in the future. However, many instructors still don't understand the…

In this article we describe the MentorBlog project, which facilitated the mentoring of trainee teachers in the postcompulsory education sector through the use of blogs. In an experimental design, the study compared their experiences with students who received traditional mentoring. Blogs were used by the trainees to communicate with their mentors…

This paper discusses a university-wide pilot designed to encourage academics to creatively explore learner-centred applications for digital audio. Participation in the pilot was diverse in terms of technical competence, confidence and contextual requirements and there was little prior experience of working with digital audio. Many innovative…

Collaborative learning with recorded lectures and presentations can be supported by allowing users to anchor notes in the documents and exchange them with other learners. While the traditional modality for annotation and discussion is text, there are a number of reasons in favour of supporting other media and modalities as well. We describe the…

Encouraging continuous improvement in the quality, scale and breadth of online education, the Sloan Consortium invites practitioners to share effective practices. This report synthesizes effective practices submitted by Sloan-C members to the online collection at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/effective as of November 2010. The synthesis includes…

In order to match the customary strengths of the still dominant face-to-face instructional mode, a high-performance online learning system must employ synchronous as well as asynchronous communications; buttress graphics, animation, and text with live audio and video; and provide many of the features and processes associated with course management…