Written during the pandemic and vaccines, the challenge in writing this book is the desire to offer best wisdom and practices now and also make sure that this publication has a shelf life beyond this pandemic. We are living in a time when Catholic schools need to make deep changes, and for that to happen when leaders don't know what the next day…

Gatekeeping and the process of assessing student suitability for social work education is increasingly being impacted by the rapid growth of online programs. It remains unclear if suitability concerns within social work programs are operationalized differently between traditional and online/hybrid programs. This quantitative study used previously…

The decision about how and when to open schools to in-person instruction has been a key question for policymakers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The instructional modality of schools has implications not only for the health and safety of students and staff, but also student learning and the degree to which parents can engage in job activities.…

Conceptual teaching was developed three decades ago as an alternative to conventional teaching approaches. It promised a significant shift in teaching practices across different disciplines and age groups. Traditionally, science subjects in high school tend to be content-heavy. Teaching science, especially biology, is still rooted in teaching…

Before the 2020-21 school year, educators, policymakers, and parents confronted the stark and uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the U.S. chose remote-only instruction and enrollment fell dramatically…

The distinction between face-to-face and distant digitally-mediated educational engagement is a complex one, and the two modes are often combined in practice, via 'blended learning' or the use of a VLE [Virtual Learning Environment] to support campus-based teaching. The current COVID-19 pandemic has thrown this distinction into relief, in a…

The COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest offer an opportunity to clarify what learning is and rethink how to design and assess a "good" school. Schools -- online, hybrid, or in-person -- should foster learning for all students. Yet, too often, schools paradoxically act as both drivers of equity and reproducers of inequities, both inviting…

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, the disruption to education has extended into 2021 and many…

Meta-analyses suggest that student learning outcomes (SLOs) are comparable across modalities of instruction. None of these studies examined how unmet student expectations (here, unexpected changes in course delivery) might increase perceptions of student--instructor-university psychological contract breaches (PCBs) and, ultimately, perceived SLOs…

Blended Online Learning (BOL) combines synchronous and asynchronous online learning in ways that potentially can overcome limitations of fully asynchronous online. Although BOL has been an emergent modality for decades, research on the experiences, benefits and challenges of its implementation has been limited. However, the COVID-19 pandemic…

A truism of school reform has long been the promise that technology, properly applied, will fuel dramatic improvement in teaching and learning. When tech-enabled schools or online learning programs haven't delivered the hoped-for results, some have dismissed these shortcomings as implementation problems--or evidence that we haven't yet deployed…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between discipline and personality in a blended classroom using the community of inquiry model. To this end, a factorial ANOVA is used to determine the main effects of the high and low of each personality trait as well as the four different clusters of discipline on the presences. The…

Blended learning, a combination of face-to-face and computer-assisted pedagogy, is gaining acceptance at universities as an alternative learning experience. Modern technology has given faculty new ways to incorporate active learning and increase student engagement in their courses. Although the broad history of technology-enhanced coursework has…

Recently, the institutionalized transformation of frontal instruction classrooms into active learning spaces to foster the concept of (inter-)active learning has gained increasing attention. To investigate the impact of elements of active learning on learning reception of students in an advanced small sized MSc STEM course (<25 students), a…

With the need to move accounting students towards deeper learning approaches and understandings, this first cycle of an action research study sought to determine the student's perspective of the flipped learning approach. With this learning approach gaining momentum in recent times, this study focuses on a first-year introductory accounting class…