Following the trend of increased interest by students to take online courses and by institutions to offer them, scholars have taken many different approaches to understand what makes one student successful in online learning while another may fail. This study proposes that using the situational theory of publics will provide a better understanding…

A 3D multi-user virtual environment holds promise to support and enhance student online learning communities due to its ability to promote global synchronous interaction and collaboration, rich multisensory experience and expression, and elaborate design capabilities. Second Life[R], a multi-user virtual environment intended for adult users 18 and…

Learners need to have good reasons to engage and accept e-learning. They need to understand that unless they do, the outcomes will be less favourable. The technology acceptance model (TAM) is the most widely recognized model addressing why users accept or reject technology. This study describes the development and evaluation of a virtual…

The development of computer-mediated communication enables teaching and learning to take place across geographical boundaries. An online synchronous learning environment with cyber face-to-face features affords students the sense of learning together online. This study reports a novel design of organizing a 16-week seminar for doctoral students…

Cooperative relationships are the foundation of a model of online learning based on communities. The development of a community depends on the interaction between community members. This study is based on the belief that the dynamics of exchange of thought, from a Piagetian perspective, are one possibility for understanding the process of…

Video games and new communication metaphors are quickly changing today's young people habits. Considering the actual e-learning scenarios, embedded in a fully technological enabled environment it is crucial to take advantage of this kind of capabilities to let learning process gain best results. This paper presents a virtual campus created using…

New information technologies provide great opportunities for education. One such opportunity is the use of remote control laboratories for teaching students about control systems. This paper describes the creation of interactive remote laboratories (RLs). Two main software tools are used: Simulink and Easy Java Simulations (EJS). The first is a…

Education researchers have amply documented the beneficial effects of help seeking on learning and understanding. Requesting help from teachers (or other human sources) when faced with a difficult task is now considered a self-regulated learning strategy. In a related domain, information search refers to learner-initiated efforts to obtain further…

Three experiments examined whether the design of virtual learning environments influences undergraduates' enrollment intentions and anticipated success in introductory computer science courses. Changing the design of a virtual classroom--from one that conveys current computer science stereotypes to one that does not--significantly increased…

This paper reports on a pilot investigation into web conferencing in a distance learning module. It focuses on the perceptions and experiences of the tutors, all of whom were new to the web conferencing environment, but were experienced in online teaching. A number of web conferencing tutorials were studied through the collection of various…

User interfaces are becoming more intuitive following the requirements of the individual learner and reinforcing the drive towards more personalised learning and greater learner autonomy. There are clearly a new set of challenges emerging for teaching practitioners that will have implications upon not just what is learned but importantly upon…

Web resources in Latin American higher education institutions have been reported to show a much stronger emphasis on Information than on Communication. A Course Management System (CMS), according to Social Constructivism framework, is an opportunity for fostering learning through interaction in a virtual environment for learning; hence,…

Massively Multiuser On-line Learning (MMOL) Platforms, often called "virtual learning worlds", constitute a still unexplored context for communication-enhanced learning, where synchronous communication skills in an explicit social setting enhance the potential of effective collaboration. In this paper, we report on an experimental study of…

In this paper we examine the transferability of the Jigsaw and Fishbowl collaborative learning techniques to the Second Life platform. Our aim is to assess the applicability of Second Life for collaborative learning by developing virtual tools and metaphors and exploiting the representational richness of this novel medium. In order to enhance the…

This study examined faculty characteristics and behaviors in 46 MBA courses conducted over a two-year period. We found that both formal instructor activities, referred to in the online learning literature as teaching presence, and informal instructor activities, known as immediacy behaviors, were positive predictors of student perceived learning…