The papers in this special issue provide support for continued scrutiny of interactional competence (IC) as an important component of the speaking construct. The contributions underscore the complex nature of IC and remind us of the multiple factors that affect any construct definition. At the same time, each study offers insights into those…

This case deals with the redesign of a standard telecourse--printed material, professional studio video recordings and phone tutoring--into an online course. The redesign involved an adjunct professor in the Humanities having some experience in distance education but little with learning technologies. It was a two-year project including the grant…

Advances in online learning have benefited rural special education teacher preparation programs through increased recruitment, access, and collaboration. This paper describes how additional challenges, such as monitoring teacher candidate use of evidence-based practices, can be addressed through a digital teaching platform. Project REACH online is…

The Functional Measurement approach, proposed within the theoretical framework of Information Integration Theory (Anderson, 1981, 1982), can be a useful multi-attribute analysis tool. Compared to the majority of statistical models, the averaging model can account for interaction effects without adding complexity. The R-Average method (Vidotto &…

E-Learning is a new form of pedagogy for learning in the 21st century. E-Teachers are e-Learning instructional designers, facilitators of interaction, and subject matter experts. The roles of e-Teachers are to enhance learners' cognitive engagement and interaction. This is achieved by using the benefits of computer mediated communication--greater…

The application of technology to educational settings has always been an interesting phenomenon. Each new technological advance is described as a panacea for whatever ails education at that moment. As people move closer to more current times, the influence of personal computers and the rise of the internet has affected the educational setting in…

This paper shows how JavaScript can be used within HTML pages to add interactive review sessions and quizzes incorporating graphics and sound files. JavaScript has the advantage of providing basic interactive functions without the use of separate software applications and players. Because it can be part of a standard HTML page, it is…

This paper reports the results of a dual-task experiment which investigates the nature of working memory resources used in sentence comprehension. Participants read sentences of varying syntactic complexity (containing subject-and object-extracted relative clauses) while remembering one or three nouns (similar to or dissimilar from the…

Discusses trends in Web-based learning environments. Highlights include common features of existing Web-based learning environments; challenges; the large amount of available online educational material; adaptation and dynamic interaction; real-time interaction; and monitoring online testing. (LRW)

This paper describes the components of a successful, online, introductory statistics course and shares students' comments and evaluations of each component. Past studies have shown that quality interaction with the professor is lacking in many online courses. While students want a course that is well organized and easy to follow, they also want to…

Describes program operation, applications, and teacher and student opinions of DELPHI, a computer program used in a wide variety of subjects which allows students and instructors to enter questions anonymously for others to answer. These question-answer pairs are then presented to other students or the instructor for comment or evaluation. (MBR)

Describes a typical Group Decision Support System (GDSS) in use at the University of Mississippi and potential uses of a GDSS in seminars, interactive testing, lectures, foreign language study, and in communication with deaf or mute students. Benefits are noted, including increased participation, group synergy, and automated record keeping. (27…

Defined in its most basic form, distance learning occurs when the student and the instructor are logistically separated. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the development and evaluation of online distance learning courses, based on integrating an adaptation of Tyler's principles within the levels of cognitive learning in…