The online instructor plays a prominent role in influencing how students respond to an online course, from designing the course structure, course activities, and assignments to encouraging interaction. Therefore, to develop effective online courses, instructors need robust feedback on their design strategies. Student evaluation of teaching (SET)…

This study focused on the development and validation of the Sense of Online Community Scale (SOCS), which includes 28 Likert-type scale items across six subscales: (1) program community; (2) program academic activities; (3) program social activities; (4) institutional academic activities; (5) institutional social activities; and (6) affiliation.…

With the rapid growth of online learning and the increased attention paid to student attrition in online programs, much research has been aimed at studying the effectiveness of online education to improve students' online learning experience and student retention. Utilizing the online learning literature as a multi-faceted theoretical framework,…

Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of Inquiry framework is a theoretical process model of online learning. Specifically, teaching presence contains three sub-elements: (1) facilitation of discourse; (2) direct instruction; and (3) instructional design and organization--that work together…

This study used a combined person- and variable-centered approach to identify self-regulated online learning latent profiles and examine their relationships with the predicted and earned course grades. College students (N=177) at a Southeastern U.S. university responded to the Online Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire. Exploratory structural…

Fostering a sense of belonging and a personal connection is seen as fundamental by many educational researchers, regardless of the learning environment. Online learning certainly provides flexible learning opportunities but comes with notable issues. For online learners, nurturing a sense of belonging may present a way of improving their…

This study investigates how time intersects with student learning in Canada's first, and only, Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) in an online teaching and learning stream. Thirty-two students responded to a survey that asked about their experiences, perceptions, and challenges after their first year of the program. Descriptive…

In this qualitative study, we analyzed the processes of a collaborative online international learning (COIL) collaboration between two higher education institutions in Japan and the United States from the perspective of the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework. The research question this study aimed to address was:…

This study focused on the perspectives of higher education stakeholders on teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in online courses in Iran, as well as preservice teachers' learning achievements in online courses. Three cohorts of participants were included in the study: preservice teachers of TEFL (n = 104), TEFL university instructors (n…

Online learning environments could be well understood as a multifaceted phenomenon affected by different aspects of learner participation including synchronous/asynchronous interactions. The aim of this study was to investigate learners' participation in online courses, synchronous interaction with a conversational virtual agent, their…

Does nonverbal communication exist in asynchronous, text-based online education? It is commonly believed that it does not due to the absence of body language and paralanguage. An examination of the definitions and forms of nonverbal cues suggests the possibility for some of them to be transmitted through asynchronous, text-based online human…

The study revisited the community of inquiry (CoI) instrument for construct revalidation. To that end, the study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine four competing models (unidimensional, correlated-factor, second-order factor, and bifactor models) on model fit statistics computed using parameter estimates from a statistical…

Despite the importance of interpersonal contact to students' sense of community, little is known about how online students form relationships outside of class. Drawing on interviews with 20 students from one online doctoral program, I explore the ways in which distance learners create community outside of class. In the case study I explore how…

Adult professionals enroll in online graduate programs and rely on social support and on their ability to self-regulate to be successful. The literature on academic self-regulation among emerging adults (traditional college age) is ample, but we do not know how social support interacts with academic self-regulation among adult graduate students at…

This paper reports the findings of a comparative analysis of online learner behavioral interactions, time-on-task, attendance, and performance at different points throughout a semester (beginning, during, and end) based on two online courses: one course offering authentic discussion-based learning activities and the other course offering authentic…