Previous research has suggested that bachelor's and master's students seem to experience challenges with thesis writing, and the need for support might be greater when studying at a distance. To further develop supportive practices for thesis writing, this study points to a need to acknowledge materialities and spaces as active and necessary…

This article will review the importance of effective communication in fully online courses, to the extent that positive culture and climate are established, and healthy faculty-student relationships are cultivated. Online courses require instructors to utilize diverse pedagogical techniques in order to reach the student audience through…

The study investigates the effect of delivery types of (virtual and face-to-face) collaborative learning environments on the development of trust among group members in a graduate course. For this aim, a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent group comparison was used. It comprised a total of 64 participants -- 21 in the face-to-face group, and 43 in…

Online learning is growing rapidly and shows no signs of slowing down. This growth requires strategies to make online teaching as efficient and effective as possible in order to provide students with a quality education. One of the important factors that help support student learning is timely, quality feedback on assignments and in discussion…

The problem presented by this study was reduced synchronous instruction in online learning environments often causes students to disengage by not participating in coursework or completing assignments. Additionally, a reduced amount of synchronous instruction opportunities yielded a reduction in coursework progress, decreased interaction, and…

This article describes how there are specific tools and techniques used by teachers in synchronous-live-virtual classroom environments. Those items were investigated in this article. Data was collected from semi-structured, one-on-one interviews conducted with a purposeful sample of twelve identified "highly-qualified" teachers at a…

Being a teacher in the 21st century is a great challenge and requires great thought. A big evolution has happened over the last 70 years. From a room computer (the Mark I in 1943) to tiny pocket computers, thousands of times smaller and thousands of times bigger in performance and capacity. E-learning 3.0 is based on synchronous interactivity and…

Students with disabilities are included in the nearly two million students who attend school online (Queen & Lewis, 2011). Like many families, parents of children with disabilities are increasingly considering online schools as an option for their child's education. Online schools may be more attractive to parents of students with disabilities…

This study explores the use of online writing studios housed in the University Writing Center and attached to a Writing in the Disciplines course in the College of Technology and a First Year Composition program. The original goal of the online writing studio, modified from Grego and Thompson's (2009) writing studio approach, was to create an…

Online education is often assumed to be synonymous with asynchronous instruction, existing apart from or supplementary to face-to-face instruction in traditional bricks-and-mortar classrooms. However, expanding access to computer-mediated communication technologies now make new models possible, including distance learners synchronous online…

The study of interactions regarding on-line environments for education is an area of research that has being developing during the last years in order to know the type of interactions that take place in discussion forums. Interactions analysis is important in order to know and to understand knowledge construction process in a virtual space.…

This literature review includes studies from online virtual high schools and colleges in The United States, Canada, and around the world. The focus of these studies is communication practices within diverse virtual school communities. It also includes information regarding a meta-analysis that was performed in order to review experimental studies…

Online teaching is in its adolescence and needs to mature in order to overcome some of its growing pains to reach its potential in the field of education. Reflecting upon the author's first three years teaching online, he notes practices and commitments that could help instructors better participate in and facilitate lifelong learning for…

Distance learning has facilitated innovative means to include Cooperative Learning (CL) in virtual settings. This study, conducted at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, compared the effectiveness of online CL strategies in discussion forums with traditional online forums. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 56 graduate student…

In this 2011 investigation, a modified Delphi technique was introduced to determine whether an informed group of post-secondary online faculty and students could arrive at a consensus regarding the importance of previously recognized verbal immediacy behaviors. Two expert panels were presented with Gorham's (1988) Verbal Immediacy Scale and tasked…