Researchers emphasize that learning presence is an important component Community of Inquiry (CoI) for understanding the process of knowledge construction through participants' meaningful engagement in an online environment. Assigning roles in learning environments helps to distribute responsibility among group members and gives learners the…

Participation and sense of belonging are important to student success. As the number of students involved in distance education increases, existing methods of communicating in distance education programs should be examined to ensure that all students feel comfortable participating in class discussions. We studied class participation in a fully…

The abrupt pivot to online teaching and learning during the Spring semester of 2020 because of worldwide stay-at-home directives left educators and their stakeholders with few guidelines to enact teaching and learning in online platforms. Network etiquette, coined as netiquette in 1995 by Intel (Hambridge, 1995), established nascent directives…

While online learning holds many benefits for graduate students, lack of student interaction often found in asynchronous content delivery may negatively impact student engagement. This study examined student perceptions of online lecture-embedded interactive activities that promoted student active engagement through quizzes and gamification. From…

With the rapid advancement of technology, integration of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been widely used in recent English as a foreign language teaching and learning. Despite the prevalence of online CMC discussions, previous studies have not drawn conclusive results, and empirical evidence on how online discussions affect student…

Many instructors question the move to online teaching and learning and it is often met with resistance as they fear that on-line learning will be more structurally didactic. In particular, one of the major concerns is that the value of face-to-face discussions will be lost. This is a core concern for courses that require the development of…

Interactions are vital for any learning, be it in a classroom learning or e-learning. While e-learning is reaching its bloom in many parts of the world it is equally gaining popularity among African nations. The situation in Botswana is not different from other African nations. Many of the e-learning institutions are now claiming that they offer…

Accompanying the rise of Web 2.0 technologies in the past decade is the growing interest in applying the tools in supporting student learning through participation. This paper reports on a systematic review of empirical studies on educational use of wiki, a popular Web 2.0 tools, in the higher education context. In particular, it focuses on how…

Technology often mediates, and thus influences, written language conventions such as punctuation and capitalization. Fifty university students sent two text messages, one with an alphanumeric multi-press keypad mobile phone (i.e., Nokia 1101) and another with a full QWERTY keypad smartphone (i.e., Apple iPhone 4). Compared to text messages sent…

Previous research on e-learning elucidates the notion of presence and learning. Scholars have conceptualized different concepts and theories based on the idea of distance education and learning. However, the "experience" of learning has been overshadowed with emphasizes on pedagogical models for social presence, theories on how to…

This paper describes the implementation of a framework for the construction and utilization of social networks in ELearning. These social networks aim to enhance collaboration between all E-Learning participants (i.e. both traineeto-trainee and trainee-to-tutor communication are targeted). E-Learning systems that include a so-called "social…

This paper shares the findings of a study conducted on a virtual inter-cultural global leadership development learning project. Mixed Methods analysis techniques were used to examine the interviews of U.S. and Uganda youth project participants. The study, based on cultural and social constructivist learning theories, investigated the effects of…

The purpose of the study was to investigate practicum students' perceptions of their experience with an online practicum course in an Applied School Psychology graduate program. With the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication technology, the instructor and students met in the online environment to engage in discussion with regard to…

Higher education institutions are under increasing pressure to offer online postgraduate programmes. Although it is reasonably common to convert existing programmes to online or blended delivery modes, it is unusual to offer a programme simultaneously in online, on-campus, and blended delivery modes. This paper describes the authors' experiences…

Numerous attempts have been made to use Second Life (SL) as a platform for language teaching. As a result, the possibility of SL as a means to promote conversational interactions has been reported. However, research has thus far largely focused on simply using SL without further augmentations for communication between learners or between teachers…