Students' social experience in fully online learning is critical to academic success. However, little is known about students' experience in online asynchronous education, particularly regarding social presence, knowledge building, and collaborative learning. In a constructivist grounded theory study, 22 graduate students enrolled in library and…

This article explores one segment of an extended research and development project that was conducted to better understand the ways online teacher professional development can support teachers' development of deep and connected mathematical understandings. In particular, this article discusses teachers' understandings of the concept of…

Online group work can be complicated because of its asynchronous characteristics and lack of physical presence, and its requirements for skills in handling technology, human relationships, and content-related tasks. This study focuses on the administrative, logistical and relationship-related challenges in online group work. Challenges in areas…

This article reports on a case of participatory self-directed online learning within the context of a graduate-level instructional technology course. The course was about online learning environments and relied on both asynchronous and synchronous technologies. In this case, the instructor and students engaged in collaborative course design…

College courses that include universal design features can minimize the need to provide accommodations for students with disabilities and make courses accessible to students from diverse backgrounds. This article examines how principles of Universal Instructional Design (UID) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can be incorporated into an…

For the fortieth time, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Jacksonville, Florida. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes.…

This study investigated communication patterns and behavior in problem-solving groups in a graduate online course. An inductive qualitative analysis method was employed to analyze 732 messages that were retrieved from small group forums. The current study identified a temporal pattern of group development was in comparison with existing…

The purpose of this collective case study is to describe and explore a virtual learning community as experienced by women reentering higher education in an online graduate degree program. The grand tour question for this study was: How do reentry women in an online graduate program describe their experience in a virtual learning community? …

This study reports on students' and lecturers' perceptions of using wikis as a platform for conducting assessed group projects in two postgraduate Master's level university courses. The results highlight the fact that student attitudes to group work, in general, are mixed, and that the use of wikis "per se" is not enough to improve these…

Online delivery of university-level courses has grown exponentially in the last decade and is increasingly being recognised as a viable and effective alternative to face-to-face classroom teaching. Many scholars have already written about the benefits and best practices of online teaching in general. However, not many studies have paid specific…