The capacity to foster interpersonal interactions in massive open online courses (MOOCs) has frequently been contested, particularly when learner interactions are limited to MOOC forums. The establishment of social presence--a perceived sense of somebody being present and "real"--is among the strategies to tackle the challenges of online…

An ego network is an individual's social network relationships with core members. In this study, the ego network parameters in online discussion spaces of high- and low-performing students were compared. The extent to which students' ego networks changed over the course were also analyzed. Participation in 7 weeks of online discussions were…

This study explores the combination of course structure, prompt type, and characteristics of discussion posts and their relationships with intersubjectivity. A content analysis measured the intersubjectivity of peer responses by analyzing the interaction analysis model (IAM) phase of each post and comparing with the IAM phase of the previous post.…

The purpose of present research is to detect cyberbullying, cybervictimization and cyberbullying sensibility levels of distance education students and analyze these levels with respect to several variables. The research has been patterned on relational screening model. Study group consisted of 297 distance education students studying at university…

The focus of this research is on an international distance discussion class carried out in Chinese between university students in Japan, China and Taiwan using videoconferencing. Smiling was used as an interactional index in an analysis of the archival footage of the recordings of the discussion between native speakers (NS) of Chinese and…

This study investigated the impact of face-to-face contact sessions and online discussion forums on the academic performance of students at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) university (N = 1,015). t-Tests for independent samples indicated that students who attended a written assignment preparation contact session performed significantly better in…

In this study, a blended synchronous learning environment (BSLE) was created to support a group of graduate students when they were taking a course. Instruction was delivered to both face-to-face (F2F) and online students simultaneously. The purpose of this paper is to present how this BSLE was gradually designed, implemented, and improved by…

Five full-time online mathematics instructors participated in a study to test the impact of using discussion forums as a space for formative assessments. Mean student posting activity and student quiz scores for sections in which the instructors used formative assessments were compared with previous sections in which formative assessments were not…

Online discussions have become inherent components of both face-to-face and distance education college courses, yet they often fail to provide much benefit to students' learning outcomes. One reason behind this phenomenon is the lack of or inadequate scaffolding or guidance provided to students when participating on asynchronous discussion boards.…

This paper examines learner attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs, and anxiety in a beginners' Spanish Language Massive Open Online Course (LMOOC) by answering three research questions: (1) how do learners feel about acquiring speaking skills on an LMOOC?; (2) do they experience anxiety with regards to speaking?; and (3) do their self-efficacy beliefs…

The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the evolution of social presence research in the field of distance education and identified problems in investigating this construct. The researchers took an integrative review on existing social presence studies to answer three questions: (a) How definitions of social presence evolved since…

With the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in recent years, discussion forums there have become one of the most important components for both students and instructors to widely exchange ideas. And actually MOOC forums play the role of social learning media for knowledge propagation. In order to further understand the emerging…

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning process exhibited in restrained online debates in terms of to what extent each of Bloom's six levels of cognitive learning were exhibited among four types of message (argument, critique, evidence, and explanation). Thirty-three graduate students enrolled in an online entry-level course in…

Research exists that applies the dualistic model of passion to face-to-face teaching, but no research has applied this model to online instruction. Distance education theories imply a need to discover factors contributing to online faculty motivation to engage students. Although there has been extensive exploration of intrinsic and extrinsic…

Motivation is one of the most important factors which influences second language learning (Dörnyei, 1998; Gardner & Lambert, 1972). A support mechanism which reinforces student motivation through encouragement, social interaction, feedback, sound learning environments and good teaching is crucial for ensuring successful learning. This is…