Increasingly, universities are embedding reflective activities into the curriculum. With the growth in online tertiary education, how effectively is reflection being promoted or used in online learning spaces? Based on the notion that teachers' beliefs will influence their approaches to teaching, this research sought to understand how a group of…

The current study aims to investigate the possibilities of developing reflective thinking among learners through distance education programs. The case of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) Islamabad, Pakistan is examined to achieve this task. The study is based on Mezirow's theory of reflective thinking, which divides thinking in four categories.…

The past two years have seen rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) with the rise of a number of MOOC platforms. The scale of enrolment and participation in the earliest mainstream MOOC courses has garnered a good deal of media attention. However, data about how the enrolment and completion figures have changed since the early…

This paper presents an empirical study aiming on investigating ODL students' perception and adoption of SCORM Compliant Learning Object (SCLO). With the increasing use of SCLO in recent years, a better understanding and implementation of effective instructional resources is necessary to meet the diverse needs of ODL students and enhance their…

This article reports on the pedagogical value of Web 2.0 tools at Unisa (i.e., whether these tools can improve teaching and learning). A quantitative approach was used to conduct the study, with a questionnaire as a data collection instrument. The sample size was 301 lecturers drawn using stratified sampling, with proportional allocation drawn…

The continuous growth of online learning and its movement towards cross-border and cross-culture education has recently taken a new turn with the epic hype that currently surrounds the development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Beattie-Moss, 2013). This development brings to focus the experiences of international students who take online…

Student success and retention is a primary goal of higher education institutions across the world. The cost of student failure and dropout in higher education is multifaceted including, amongst other things, the loss of revenue, prestige, and stakeholder trust for both institutions and students. Interventions to address this are complex and…

Drawing upon cultural-historical activity theory, this research analyzed the structural contradictions existing in a variety of educational activities among a group of alienated adult students in Korea National Open University (KNOU). Despite KNOU's quantitative development in student enrollment, the contradictions shed light on how the…

Higher education in Tanzania like in many other Sub-Saharan countries suffers from unavailability of quality teaching and learning resources due to lack of tradition, competence, and experience to develop such resources. Nevertheless, there are thousands of open educational resources (OER) freely available in the public domain that can potentially…

Many open universities and distance education institutions have shifted from a predominantly print-based mode of delivery to an online mode characterised by the use of virtual learning environments and various web technologies. This paper describes the impact of the shift to open and distance e-learning (ODeL), as this trend might be called, on…

The advantages of mobile technologies have not been lost on higher education institutions, and they have tried to provide educational services through the use of mobile learning management system (LMS). However, offering such services does not necessarily mean that the students will adopt the new technology. Thus, the purpose of this study was to…

Outside an academic setting, telecommuting has become fairly popular in recent years. However, research on telecommuting practices within a higher education environment is fairly sparse, especially within the higher distance education sphere. Drawing on existing literature on telecommuting and the outcome of a valuation study on the success of an…

Flexibility in learning provides a student room for volitional control and an array of strategies and encourages persistence in the face of difficulties. Autonomy in and control over one's learning process can be seen as a condition for self-regulated learning. There are a number of categories and dimensions for flexible learning; following…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a recent addition to the range of online learning options. Since 2008, MOOCs have been run by a variety of public and elite universities, especially in North America. Many academics have taken interest in MOOCs recognising the potential to deliver education around the globe on an unprecedented scale; some of…

The open educational resources (OER) movement has gained momentum in the past few years. With this new drive towards making knowledge open and accessible, a large number of OER repositories have been established and made available online throughout the world. However, the inability of existing search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to…