How are educational encounters understood, experienced, and lived? How are they conceptualized? How do they shape our being in and of the world? In this time of apparent distance and disconnect, this volume emphasizes the role of contact and connectedness in education, above all by understanding education as encounters, as embodied, sensory…

This design case follows the transformation of a language and culture course for first-year international students from face-to-face to online. It focuses on creating and managing disorienting dilemmas in an online environment as students are given the opportunity to pursue transformative learning. Design decisions about creating community, course…

This paper describes an online undergraduate course that explores ways the arts can help students develop a clearer understanding of how perceptions about (dis)ability affect their lives, and the lives of others. The course engages a variety of questions through web-mediated and arts-based activities, including: What is disability? How does…

In this essay, I argue that the disruption to 'business as usual' caused by COVID-19 should be embraced as an opportunity to address some of the pernicious and inequitable, albeit unintentional, consequences of existing approaches to internationalization.

The goal of training is to improve employee performance, and ultimately support organizational success. However, training does not always effectively transfer to workplaces to positively affect work practices, particularly because of disconnect between behaviourist approaches and contemporary work arrangements. The transfer of training to the…

If ever there was an appropriate time to reassess models of instructional delivery for language learning, that time is now. The coronavirus pandemic has led to a public health crisis, countless grieving families, and to a social order and private lives turned upside down. Many have lost their livelihoods, as businesses and governments struggle to…

Online education is becoming prevalent across the higher education sector and requires new approaches to teaching and learning. As music is seen as a 'hands on' discipline, there has been a very gradual move toward the use of online technologies in music teaching in tertiary education, especially in the area of performance studies. By surveying…

We report on educators' experiences of a massive open online course (MOOC) focused on the Carpe Diem learning design process. The MOOC was developed in-house using Blackboard CourseSites by a university innovation and development unit, Learning Transformations, at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. We report on a study of…

This paper explores cultural inclusivity in online learning design by discussing two international capacity development projects: an online tutor mentor development programme in Sri Lanka and a hybrid physician assistant training programme in Ghana. Inclusivity involves establishing partnerships and conducting needs assessments to maximise the…

This article recounts the experiences of a team of faculty, graduate students, and instructional technologists facilitating Rhetorical Composing, a writing-focused Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). When first offering the MOOC, we recognized quickly that we needed to emphasize the global makeup of our learning cohort to foster a stronger sense of…

Despite the recent increases of interest in open education, notably in massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Fini, 2009), it has been continuously asserted that this form of social knowledge production lacks a philosophical or theoretical foundation (Vandenberg, 1975). Similar accusations have been made with respect to distance education, such as…

In response to the national conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration in recent years, we created an online partnership between students in concurrent border studies courses at our two campuses: a public Hispanic-serving institution in South Texas and a private, small liberal arts college in Michigan. We explored whether and how…

Powerful and transformative learning experiences display characteristics in common with each other. Emerging communication technologies may increase opportunities for powerful and transformative learning experiences. To explore this question, there are four sections to this article. First, it is observed that there are many interesting synergies…

Universities across the country are steadily increasing their use of online courses. Society's demand for lifelong learning will encourage the advancement of distance learning. Research tells us that today the average person changes careers every ten years. In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that about 10% of workers change jobs…

The globalization of online courses has transformed online learning into cross-cultural learning spaces. Students from non-English backgrounds are enrolling in credit-bearing courses and must adjust their thinking and writing to adapt to online practices. Online courses have as their aim the construction of knowledge, but students' perceptions of…