Scholarship on instructive technologies in higher education has emphasized the use of high-tech facilitative technologies for long-term use, and low-tech props to illustrate single topics. This paper, on the contrary, discusses the use of a long-term, low-tech instructional technology: Llewelyn the Lynx was a soft animal used to assist with…

The book provides best practices from online educators who are engaged in online teaching and program development in Christian higher education. It also explores the distinct aspects of teaching and developing online courses and programs from a Christian perspective and within Christian higher education institutions. As such it is can serve as a…

Distance learning and collaboration software is beneficial to on-site students as well as off-site students. Collaborative learning (CL) allows students to work together in small groups to help each other master academic material. CL helps teachers by exploiting the ability of students to communicate with each other, and more actively engages…

Finds that student Groupware users are generally satisfied with member contributions and group output but are less satisfied with software-supported, decision-making processes. Suggests that Groupware is a powerful communication tool for support of work groups but that it may not in itself solve the basic problems of getting people to work…

There is evidence of the pedagogical effectiveness of online teaching and the teaching styles that work best with it. However, few studies have looked at the specific pedagogical approaches in relation to specific learning variables such as cognitive components, motivational components, and social components, and the online teaching features that…

A political science professor at James Madison University (VA) constructed a Web page to support an undergraduate course in government. This article defines Web-site goals and audience, reviews other sites, and discusses organization of Web links and technical choices for HTML editor, page layout and use of image, audio, and video files. Stresses…

This report examines three text-based conferencing products: "WowBB", "Invision Power Board", and "vBulletin". Their selection was prompted by a feature-by-feature comparison of the same products on the "WowBB" website. The comparison chart painted a misleading impression of "WowBB's" features in relation to the other two products; so the…

Examines computer-mediated communication (CMC) in higher education, particularly the evaluation of network resources for course-related student communication. Presents case studies of e-mail seminars in Scottish language studies and music, demonstrates the significance of emphasizing process over outcome, and discusses factors affecting CMC usage:…

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are learning management software systems that synthesize the functionality of computer-mediated communications software and online methods of delivering course materials. This report focuses on how to evaluate the properties, capabilities and orientation of different systems from an educational perspective, and…

A product evaluation was conducted of "Desire2Learn", an online learning management system gaining popularity in educational institutions. Since an online trial version of the software was not available for evaluation, an inspection meeting with the vendor was arranged. This provided the evaluation team with an opportunity to examine the…

Online teaching and learning has been in transition for its entire existence. The number of courses offered at a distance has grown rapidly. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (Waits & Lewis, 2003), in 2000-2001 more than 56% of four-year colleges and universities in the United States offered distance education degree…

This paper presents the results of an experiment using videoconferencing in a distance graduate course in the Computer Science Department at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The purpose of the experiment was to test two videoconference technologies that are widely used on the Internet, Cu-SeeMe and Real technology, and to assess…

This paper describes Coconuts (Concurrent Collaborative Learning Environment Supported by Awareness), a proposed module of Sharlok (Sharing, Linking and Looking-for Knowledge), an open-ended and collaborative learning environment that integrates a knowledge building tool with a collaborative interface tool. Coconuts was developed in order to…

For more than 5 years, Mexico's El Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterey (ITESM) has offered distance education programs in addition to traditional face-to-face programs. ITESM has recently begun migrating to new e-learning platforms (Blackboard and Web Tec) that are more user-friendly and flexible than its previous e-platform…