The study investigated the impact on student engagement and achievement of a "formative thresholded" continuous assessment strategy in which students had to meet a modest threshold, but their continuous assessment marks did not contribute to their final grade. Students were free to choose their own blend of tutor-marked and…

Flexibility is typical of open universities and their e-learning designs. While this constitutes their main attraction, promising learners will be able to study "anytime, anyplace," this also demands more self-regulation and engagement, a cause for student dropout. This case study explores professors' experiences of flexibility in…

Twitter has over 326 million monthly active users with the number of daily users growing every year since 2016 and is increasingly used by students and academics to interact and build online learning communities. For distance language learners, Twitter offers an open, free, and accessible environment for interaction and engagement which is…

Although collaboration skills are highly valued by employers, convincing students that collaborative learning activities are worthwhile, and ensuring that the experience is both useful and enjoyable, are significant challenges for educators. This paper addresses these challenges by exploring students' and tutors' experiences of a group project…

Purpose: Because student viewership of video lectures serves as an important aspect of e-learning environments, video lectures should be delivered in a way that enhances the learning experience. The delivery of video lectures through diverse forms of media is a useful approach, which may have an effect on student learning, satisfaction, engagement…

How do (potential) students differ in their preferences for the organization of online and distance courses and programs, can these differences be grouped into preference profiles, and are there any associations between these profiles and variables, such as achievement and dropout, that are relevant for the promotion and design of online and…

This paper outlines the benefits to distance education teachers of formatting a weekly online newsletter in accordance with motivational learning theory. It reflects on the delivery of weekly AIM newsletters to undergraduate economics students at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand via Moodle. The acronym, AIM, stands for Academic content,…

Fully online courses are becoming progressively more popular because of their "anytime anywhere" learning flexibility. One of the ways students interact with each other and with the instructors within fully online learning environments is via asynchronous discussion forums. However, student engagement in online discussion forums does not…

Quantitative and qualitative research of a case study course confirmed that the course achieved a highly interactive learning experience, associated with more effective student support and high student retention. Computer conferencing achieved high participation from the beginning and evidence of dialogue and argumentation within online tutor…

This article argues that in the drive to develop e-learning initiatives in distance learning, simpler ways of supporting students for retention may be overlooked; for example, the linking of students in the form of mentoring and peer support networks. The article reports on three mentoring projects, in the United Kingdom, Korea and New Zealand,…

Accompanying awareness of the potential for lifelong learning to secure social inclusion and economic survival, e-learning has grown in significance and a fragile consensus about its purposes has emerged among stakeholders. The University for Industry (Ufi) and its e-learning arm, learndirect, have focused efforts especially (but not entirely)…