Nationwide, postsecondary institutions are seeing the need and searching for ways to prepare their students for life in an increasingly complex and often polarized society. Since its development in the 1980s, intergroup dialogue (IGD) has become a nationally prominent social justice pedagogy that brings together small, diverse groups of college…

Much architecture and design teaching is based on the studio format, where the co-presence in time and space of students, instructors and physical learning artefacts form a triangle from which the learning emerges. Yet with the advent of online communication platforms and learning management systems (LMS), there is reason to study how these…

Student engagement is a prerequisite for successful learning. Due to the tremendous change in the use of information and communication technologies, the nature of this engagement has had to adapt to fit a hybrid approach of teaching and learning. In this qualitative study, three focus group discussions were conducted that aimed to investigate…

This research links learner engagement with interactions when Hybrid Virtual Learning models are used. Various aspects have been considered, such as learners' prior experiences related to virtual worlds, their preconceptions regarding their use as a learning tool, and the impact that instructional designers' choices have on enhancing the…

The EduLab model is a "new" educational model that integrates technologies in educational contexts comprising full equipped classrooms with attractive and easy-to-use technological resources. This model tries to promote a dynamic and more effective teaching and learning process. For this purpose, the model provides teachers training and…

This article reports a theory-driven experimental study that evaluates the effects of an annotation functionality on online social interaction and individual learning outcomes. The central hypothesis of this study is that directly addressing a part of a text by annotating it and then connecting each annotation with its related discussion can…

Asynchronous online discussion forums are increasingly common in blended learning environments but the relationship to student learning outcomes has not been reported for anatomy teaching. Forums were monitored in two multicampus anatomy courses; an introductory first year course and a second year physiotherapy-specific course. The forums are…

Asynchronous online threaded discussions are widely recognized as a tool to enhance learning in the virtual classroom. While they can serve as a mechanism for reinforcing material and promoting a deeper understanding of course content, discussion boards often lack rich and dynamic dialogue, and instead serve as a field of obligatory discourse,…

Online communication forums allow students to collaborate and construct understandings of course material together, but little is known about students' discussion participation across online and blended (hybrid) classroom environments. This study begins to address this research gap by examining students' asynchronous discussions (number and length…

In this study we present an overview of the undergraduate blended Physics course that has been supported by the Moodle platform. The course that has been applied is a basic physics course for primary student teachers. The aim of Moodle is to create an online learning environment which helps students to have a virtual space where they can share…

The objective of this self-study is to expand the emerging scholarship on meaningful integration and scaffolding of SNSs and the new literacies requisite for their effective use in higher education environments. As a teacher educator, the first author describes the successes and challenges she experienced introducing Twitter into her college…

This article examines whether a mixture of virtual and real-life interaction--in contrast to purely virtual interaction--among some members of online communities for teachers is beneficial for all teachers' professional development in the whole community. Earlier research indicated that blended communities tend to face fewer trust and free rider…

The Association Supporting Computer Users in Education (ASCUE) is a group of people interested in small college computing issues. It is a blend of people from all over the country who use computers in their teaching, academic support, and administrative support functions. Begun in 1968 as the College and University Eleven-Thirty Users' Group…

The LMS (learning management system) at many schools for delivering, tracking and managing education relies on TEL (technology-enhanced learning), what Nichols called "pedagogy empowered by digital technology" (Nichols, 2008). It includes the "paperless classroom" in traditional (not online) classes in which faculty and students exchange…

This paper examines the learning outcomes associated with implementing discussion forums and blog writings using pseudonyms in blended learning. Although anonymity or masking one's identity has been used as a teaching strategy designed to induce higher writing production and lowering anxiety in face-to-face writing instruction, little research has…