To explore the potential applications of synchronous technology to enrich student learning, faculty members from an American regional state university and a Chinese regional university collaborated to find appropriate ways to integrate synchronous technology (e.g., Adobe Connect) into an educational technology program in the American university…

This paper has a dual aim: to situate functionalities among the complex of factors that help shape online interactions and to explore the heterogeneity of audio conferencing and its implications. Following a critical discursive synthesis of the treatment of variables in the literature, attention focuses on the distinctive and diverse…

A fully online graduate program that was developed at the UWF (University of West Florida) has been successfully implemented using synchronous instruction since fall 2009. The hybrid nature of the developed model has proven to be of benefit to both face-to-face and distance students. Aside from the robustness of students' discussions and…

Duquesne University's department of journalism and multimedia arts supports many of its classes with Mediasite Live, a video conferencing system that captures the output of presentation devices and streams it live to the Web, as well as recording presentations for Web streaming or recording to CD or DVD. Bill Gibbs and Erik Larson examine the…

Discusses developments in desktop videoconferencing. Highlights include document conferencing, collaboration, software, equipment, vendors, standards, customer service, costs, connectivity, professional training, systems implementation, and future perspectives. Sidebars provide examples of videoconferencing, virtual classrooms, and training…

This paper summarizes what the author has seen go wrong in six years of participation in online discussions and recommends some remedies. The emphasis is on helping discussion leaders to structure and guide online discussions for maximum effectiveness. The paper has a focus on learning environments, which are central to both formal academic…

This article provides an overview of Telementoring Orchestrator[TM] (TMO), a new web-based software tool designed to aid small or large organizations in supporting telementoring programs (also called online mentoring or e-mentoring programs). In this report, we review the research that inspired the design of the software, and survey the major…

This project sought to explore the educational potential of three models of a University of Indiana computer conferencing technology in facilitating collaborative learning and enhancing social interaction in instructional contexts that provide limited face-to-face contact among the students. The study examined each of the three models of computer…

The web has the potential to offer an environment that can support standardized medical education to students dispersed in time or place and, in the process, respond to reduced availability of patients for practice. This exploratory article describes how we evaluated critical thinking in an online collaborative Problem-based Learning (PBL)…

While the major part of any class is the classroom contact time, out-of-class support often makes the difference between success and failure of a student. With distance learning classes, teachers are faced with a unique set of problems in supplying this outside support. Students are often spread over large geographical areas and have varying…

This article is aimed at educators who find themselves facing the need to develop their e-teaching skills, with little or no formal training or institutional support. It explores how this can be achieved using the notion of "teacher autonomy" in combination with standard professional development measures for language teachers. The…