Although research exists on traditional and virtual internships, there is a significant gap in understanding virtual instructional technology (IT) internships for graduate students. Specifically, this study addresses three key areas: (1) the unique benefits and challenges experienced by graduate students in virtual IT internships, (2) the…

Virtual reality (VR) in education has tremendous potential in providing immersive and interactive experiences for students. Immersive virtual reality (IVR) technologies and IVR learning experiences have been increasingly used in education settings to support a variety of instructional methods and outcomes by providing experiential and authentic…

Academic programs commonly feature a capstone experience as the final building block of the course of study. Often, capstone experiences allow students to demonstrate mastery in the context of an authentic learning experience--a real-life problem or project situated in the field of practice. The growing number of academic programs conducted online…

Under the constructivist learning paradigm, which emphasises authenticity as a required condition for learning, distance educators have been striving to create authentic learning environments that reflect the real world. However, it is inevitably challenging to make an online learning environment authentic for learners when it is ultimately…

Integrating authentic learning opportunities into online courses can be particularly challenging. These challenges have contributed to a lack of examples (i.e., case studies) of how online instructors have successfully integrated authentic learning into their courses (Vo et al. 2018). This article fills this gap by describing the process of…

There is an increased demand for a skilled workforce that is prepared for work in today's digital economy, which is often done in virtual teams. Thus, while many students today have little or no experience working in this mode, they are often placed in virtual teams early in their careers. We argue that that if students have the opportunity to…

This research examined how leveraging social networks in distance learning facilitated authentic learning in a 4-week teacher-education course. The pilot study aimed to examine the course design, and learner perceptions of social networks in distance learning. The course design was structured around nine principles of the authentic learning…

As schools endeavor to provide all students with access to computational thinking and computer science, the hackathon emerges as a competitive and high-energy event that uses authentic problems to motivate learners to engage in the domain of computing. This article presents the design case of a hackathon for teenagers as enacted over five…

This paper offers lessons learned from a partnership between the Texas A&M School of Innovation (I-School) and the Texas A&M Educational Technology program. Taking on the I-School as a "client," online graduate students in an Advanced Instructional Design course spent a semester designing the first of a set of online educational…

Students today spend more time writing on social media than they do in formal classrooms and have developed distinct and complex literacies separate from traditional writing curricula. Although several studies have explored teens' informal literacy practices online, research investigating how these spaces may inform or be effectively utilized in…

Despite the fact that e-service-learning has been regarded as a means to providing students with valuable real-world experiences, the pace of implementing e-service-learning into online courses has not kept up with the overall growth of online learning. Further examination into instructional strategies and supports to facilitate e-service-learning…

Authentic learning in online education is feasible with intentional instructional strategies and appropriate educational technologies, yet as a learning approach, barriers to implementation still exist. We argue that authentic learning in online education can be successfully supported when the characteristics of authentic learning are (a)…

This article discusses the results of a survey that measured school teachers' and mobile learning (m-learning) experts' perceptions of the relative importance and effectiveness of various pedagogical principles underpinning m-learning designs. A scan of relevant literature produced a set of articles describing effective innovative m-learning.…

Educational design research (EDR) was applied to address the challenge of providing more public health professionals with opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills related to Good Clinical Practices (GCP) inspections. The conduct of clinical research in accordance with the principles of GCP is necessary to ensure that clinical research…

We describe the integration of telecollaborative language coaching sessions into an online Spanish program as the unifying thread for asynchronous learning and reflection activities. In survey responses, students reported improved language skills and cultural knowledge, and the ability to apply linguistic skills to "real-life" situations…