WhatsApp groups are considered useful for creating and supporting virtual communities. This mixed method case study explores the patterns that emerged when we used WhatsApp to create a community of learning during the multimodal presentation of a postgraduate course in research proposal writing. Three questions drive the study: (1) What kinds of…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities into emergency remote learning. For universities situated in a country where internet connectivity prices are high, network coverage is low, and most students live in rural areas, this presented a unique set of problems. One of the issues is that traditional orientations were face-to-face for first-time…

Following an unprecedented situation of confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, academic institutions were called to focus on supporting telecommunications technologies. For the first time, Higher Education went completely online. The authors of this research conducted an online voluntary survey where Greek students could answer questions about…

This paper reports on a study that integrated two instant messaging applications (Moya Messenger App and WhatsApp) and a myUnisa's online discussion forum (ODF), and utilised them as tools to support student learning at an open and distance e-learning university in South Africa. The participants in this study were 41 undergraduate education…

The technological advancements for teaching and learning sciences for health science students are embedded in the Thalluri-Penman Good Practice Model, which aims to improve the learning experiences of science students and increase student retention and success rates. The model also links students from urban and rural areas, studying both on-and…

As e-learning is evolving into a mainstream, widespread practice, adopted by higher education institutions worldwide, much effort is geared towards the articulation of models and strategies for implementing e-learning in formal education settings. In the field of pre-service teacher education, a rising challenge is to equip the "21st century…

Formative feedback is instrumental in the learning experience of a student. It can be effective in promoting learning if it is timely, personal, manageable, motivational, and in direct relation with assessment criteria. Despite its importance, however, research suggests that students are discouraged from engaging in the feedback process primarily…

At present, it is difficult to assess the quality of learning in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments, because standard pretest and posttest measures do not capture the differences in the learner's ability to engage in the material, pose interesting new questions, engage others in learning and work collaboratively. This…

Traditional educational and training settings have dictated that the act of learning is an activity that is motivated by learners, directed by a teacher expert and based on information transfer and data manipulation. In this scenario, it has been assumed that learners more or less acquire knowledge or develop sets of skills as a result of such…

The learning and teaching relationship, whether online or in the classroom, is changing. Mentis offers a typology of teacher roles gathered from current literature on e-learning including instructor, designer, guide, mediator, curator and mentor, which offer the university teacher a striking range of ways in which to develop relationships with…

The main objective of this pilot research project was to determine whether the use of an internet broadband link to stream physiotherapy clinical education workshop proceedings in "real-time" is of equivalent educational value to the traditional face-to-face experience. This project looked at the benefits of using the above technology as…

Acknowledging the fact that teachers are at the heart of any educational reform effort, the European Union funded project EarlyStatistics aims to enrich European children's learning of statistics by offering their mathematics teachers a high-quality online professional development program. A central conviction underlying the design of the program…

This paper reports on a study to determine if existing technology is adequate for the delivery of quality distance education. The survey sample was 392 respondents from a non-traditional graduate level. The study included 15 descriptive questions on course assessment and satisfaction. The three hypotheses used Chi-square to find relationships…

While Online Learning Environments (OLEs) can potentially support learning that is more autonomous and authentic in nature than traditional instructional environments often allow, students do not always use OLEs in the ways expected or desired by their tutors. This paper examines the findings of a recent evaluation of an OLE designed for…