As online education expands, cultivating a sense of belonging becomes increasingly complex, especially for students who may never set foot on a physical campus. In this article, we explore the nuanced nature of fostering a sense of belonging and mattering among distance learners on our own campus, Indiana University (IU) East. To address these…

Blended synchronous learning (BSL) represents several contexts that enable to bring remote students into the classroom, in real time, by the means of videoconferencing, web conferencing and virtual world. As BSL seems to be more and more implemented in many higher education institutions, especially in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic,…

In the wake of the effort to control the rapid spread of COVID-19, social distancing measures took hold at Wheaton College. Students and faculty described new contexts in which they would be learning: now sharing confined spaces at home with others, unable to have all the answers they needed to understand the future of their work, working through…

Support for parents who wish to develop communication skills is critical. When parents have communication with their children, they are better able to express their concerns, expectations, and support. Bonding with children--and their social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic development--depends on communication with those who love them. This…

The focus of all of this intense interchange was the shape and future of learning institutions. Our charge was to accept the challenge of an Information Age and acknowledge, at the conceptual as well as at the methodological level, the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that…

This case study examined student preference for delivery mode of online courses in two graduate degree programs in Library and Information Science. Within-group and between-groups comparisons indicated a distinct preference across the institutions. Findings from focus groups conducted with two cohorts of students enrolled in a federally funded…

As educational institutions and other training facilities search for more economical ways to deliver education and training, the Internet has become the main mode of choice for its reach is farther and wider than any major educational marketing initiative. The Internet is also an inexpensive tool that delivers access to education and training to…

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University (BRAOU), the first distance teaching university in India, was a great educational event. It started a new chapter in the history of India's distance higher education. The general objects this research studies are: (1) to identify the information and communication technologies used in open distance education…

Teaching Practice is a core component of pre-service or initial teacher education programmes worldwide. The requirements set by the South African Committee on Higher Education effected changes to the coordination and supervision of Teaching Practice. The purpose of this conceptual study was to review and gain insight into the use of various…

This article examines the introduction of new online technologies to support distance language learning in a higher education institution in the UK, charting the development from using telephone conferencing in the 1990s to the implementation of Moodle and videoconferencing more recently. It uses the sociocultural concept of the learner-context…

Software allowing real-time online video connectivity is rapidly evolving. The ability to connect students, staff, and guest speakers instantaneously carries great benefits for the online distance education classroom. This evaluation report compares four software applications at opposite ends of the cost spectrum: "DimDim", "Elluminate VCS",…

This case study reports on a teacher training experience for college professors in which participants were trained, taking advantage of technological tools, in two main teaching competences. First, professors were trained to use technology to enrich students' learning outcomes. Second, they applied strategies of significant learning in the design…

In the past two decades, as new capabilities for video communication have emerged, their use in educational contexts has steadily increased. Initially located in higher education, the use of videoconferencing for a broad range of learning purposes is now established in many schools. Although a considerable body of literature exists that describes…

This paper explores the use of videoconferencing as used in English schools, drawing on data collected over seven years from a number of funded and unfunded projects. A common theme emerging from across these investigations is that the educational use of videoconferencing technology in schools is not a unitary phenomenon. Rather, different…

Connecting with other education professionals is important in supporting teacher learning. Teachers in remote locations in Australia experience a professional isolation due to geographic isolation that makes it difficult to engage in sustained collaborations with other teachers. In a national project ICT was used to assist these teachers by…