This study assessed the implementation of a virtual assistant chatbot, EpiBot, in an online epidemiology course using the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance framework to evaluate acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness. EpiBot was piloted by 29 public health undergraduate students at a Hispanic Serving…

Peer Assisted learning (PAL) in-class is well-established and flourishing in higher education across the globe; nevertheless, interest is growing in online versions and is reflected by a number of pilot schemes. These programs have responded to perceived and actual needs of students and institutions; they have explored the available software…

Online education is popular from a consumer perspective, but there are elements of face-to-face instruction and assessment that are difficult to reproduce online (Bassoppo-Moyo 2006). The difficulty of reproducing valued elements of a face-to-face setting leads to concerns regarding the overall quality of the online learning experience.…

An increasing number of students in the United States are involved in online education, according to research by the Sloan Foundation. By fall 2004, approximately 2.6 million students were estimated to be enrolled in at least one online course, an average growth rate of 24.8% from 2003-04; this figure represents a 5% increase over the 2002-03…

With teacher shortages in both general and critical needs areas and constricting operating budgets, it is important for Colleges of Education to develop methods of providing alternative certification programs to reach larger segments of the population. One method of increasing the scope of potential preservice teachers is through the development…

For minority serving institutions, policies that support learners call for decisions about equity, quality, cost, impact on national economic performance and international global relationships.

The Community Development Master's Program is an inter-institutional, trans-disciplinary degree program that began in 2005 online at five participating universities in the North Central region. This article discusses outcomes of interviews with current and past students in the program to determine if a multi-institutional program, versus a program…

FODEM (FOrmative DEvelopment Method) is a design method for developing digital learning environments for widely dispersed learning communities. These are communities in which the geographical distribution and density of learners is low when compared to the kind of learning communities in which there is a high distribution and density of learners…

The E-School Technology Innovation Challenge Grant of 1996 was the genesis of the Department of Education's (DOE's) efforts to initiate a multi-prong approach to bring standards-based curriculum to the children of Hawai'i and use technology to upgrade professional development for its teachers. In this article, the authors describe how various…