Social presence is a popular construct used to describe how people socially interact in online courses. Online educators continue to try different ways to establish and maintain social presence in online courses. However, research to date has not identified which strategies, or types of strategies, are best for establishing social presence. We…

Although distance learning has become an essential part of everyday life of most students during quarantine, there is little evidence regarding its effectiveness among Ukrainian students. The objective of the research is to estimate the effectiveness of current distance learning process in Ukrainian higher educational institutions; outline types…

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…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how chatbots can be used to address two key struggles that students face in first year--a sense of being disconnected from the instructor, and information overload. The authors propose that chatbots can be a useful tool for helping students navigate the volumes of information that confront them as…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of information placement within the confines of the online classroom architecture. Also reviewed was the impact of other variables such as course design, teaching presence and student patterns in looking for information. The sample population included students from a major online university in…

This article suggests an efficient self-directed learning method that will help improve students' actual English ability by adopting Facebook, which is one of the most represented social networking services (SNS). The purpose of this article is to present a practical way in which to implement SNS-based, self-directed English learning by applying…

A sense of belonging to a learning community has been identified as one of the factors contributing to greater student satisfaction and persistence in online education programs. Using the community of inquiry framework as a theoretical guide, the purpose of this study was to explore the role of VoiceThread, a web-based platform that facilitates…

The inclusion of online elements in learning environments is becoming commonplace in Post Compulsory Education. A variety of research into the value of such elements is available, and this study aims to add further evidence by looking specifically at the use of collaborative technologies such as online discussion forums and wikis to encourage…

For second language writing (SLW) instructors, decisions regarding technology-mediated feedback are particularly complex as they must also navigate student language proficiency, which may vary across different areas such as reading or listening. Yet technology-mediated feedback remains an underexplored realm in SLW especially with regard to how…

The notion of synchronous office hours in an asynchronous course seems counterintuitive. After all, one of the tenets of asynchronous education is to not require students to be online and participating at any time during the course. Having taught higher education online asynchronous courses for twenty years, the researcher experimented with online…

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) can create large scale communities of learners who collaborate, interact and discuss learning materials and activities. MOOCs are often delivered multiple times with similar content to different cohorts of learners. However, research into the differences of learner communication, behavior and expectation between…

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between students' perceptions of online discussions, participation and e-moderation behaviours in peer-moderated asynchronous online discussions. Using survey data, the learning system's activity log and discussion transcripts, the authors analysed how 84 learners' perceptions of online…

This article is based on a Cross-Cultural Distance Learning (CCDL) model between university students in Korea and Japan during the 1st semester of 2016 and this lesson model consists of synchronous and asynchronous CMC activities focusing on the interactions between non-native speakers of English. This article shows that EFL learners in Korea can…

Semi-formal learning is used to describe learning that is directed towards the goals of a formal learning institution but outside of the learning structure of a specific class. Students studying online may form semi-formal groups to increase their knowledge of the content by interacting with other learners taking the same class. This study of…

There has been an increased demand on educational institutions to provide students with value for money. The sociology course SOCI3035 Caribbean Social Problems with 111 students was transformed to a fully flipped course replacing several face-to-face lectures, tutorials and assessment with online versions as homework. Face to face lecture time…