Since March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed unprecedented stresses on the public education system in the United States. At every level, from the U.S. Department of Education down through local districts and individual schools, the pandemic has presented formidable challenges. Many of these challenges have been…

Depending on the evolving technological possibilities, distance and online education applications have gradually gained more significance in the education system. Regarding the issues, such as advancements in the server services, disc capacity, cloud computing opportunities resulting from the increase in the number of the broadband internet users,…

This paper discusses a current project to develop open educational resources (OER) for legislative counsel in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. The project is the latest step in a 20-year old distance education program for those professionals. The paper explores best practices for investment in freely available OER for use by professionals…

Different technologies have been used for decades to support adult education and learning. These include radio, television and audio and video cassettes. More recently digital ICTs such as computers, tablets, e-books, and mobile technology have spread at great speed and also found their way into the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy…

Advances in technology are enabling dramatic changes in education content, delivery, and accessibility. Throughout history, new technologies have facilitated the exponential growth of human knowledge. In the early twentieth century, the focus was on the use of radios in education. But since then, innovators have seen technology as a way to improve…

SMS based learning delivery platforms have been increasingly used in different countries and university learning situations to deliver vocabulary and concept learning content to university students. The present study sums up five mini studies in which a total of 1028 first year university students, majoring in social studies at chartered Israeli…

Nigeria has joined the global race of teaching and learning in a changing educational environment by adopting open and distance learning (ODL). Although it is a global trend, ODL poses some challenges at local levels, one of which is the untimely production of teaching materials currently affecting instructional delivery in Nigeria. The modern…

One of the most explosive areas of growth in the field of higher education is currently in emerging international markets. In developing nations, lack of access to high-quality teachers and educational materials is often the key obstacle preventing students from gaining the skills and knowledge they need to pursue new opportunities and advance in…

A course disk in either CD or DVD format can be very beneficial to online, hybrid, or distance courses in statistics as well as traditional on-campus courses, augmenting existing technologies like course management systems. A typical course disk may include the syllabus and course outline, calendar, instructions, lecture notes and lecture…

Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement, making a selection of teaching and learning materials available through its OER directory, UCT OpenContent. However, persuading and then supporting busy academics to share their teaching materials as OER…

Issues associated with the preparation of engineering faculty to teach online courses are examined. This includes: the nature of online teaching, engineering course materials, training faculty to teach online, use of online resources, course development, and evaluation of online courses. Selection of faculty and providing adequate support are…

This study investigated student and faculty perceptions of their experiences with online learning in dental hygiene Bachelor of Science degree completion programs on the dimensions of: quality of learning, connectedness to the learning environment, technology factors and student satisfaction. The experiences of dental hygiene students who took…

This is a manual for those considering the role of Tutor in an educational programme following Open and Distance Learning (ODL) methodologies. To introduce the concept of self-learning, the manual is designed to be self-instructional: (1) Self paced; (2) Easy to read; (3) Easy to follow the instructions; (4) Illustrated with examples to enhance…

Explores the depth of the impact which networked, digital technologies are having on the global information environment and calls for the development of new curricula appropriate to that new world. Raises questions regarding the kinds of knowledge that are required by students entering the 21st century to help educators avoid using new digital…

In this paper, animated pedagogical agents are looked at from an instructional design perspective. A "support-typology" was constructed based on different dimensions on which support can be described and different roles instructional agents can assume. This typology is used to analyze currently available pedagogical agents. This analysis indicates…