Due to a variety of factors, many paraeducators receive little to no opportunities to advance their professional skills. Asynchronous online learning opportunities offer a flexible way for districts to provide paraeducators opportunities to advance their knowledge, although little is known about what online resources are available, their features,…

When COVID-19 shut down in-person programs across the world in 2020, we (the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab)) as practitioners were in unknown territory. This paper outlines the structure of a 10-week online Summer Exploration Series (SES) program along with the evaluation performed by staff at the MagLab in 2020. The goal of the…

Due to COVID-19, all courses at a regional comprehensive university in the southeastern United States transitioned online and were delivered remotely in the latter half of the spring semester of 2020. In this study, students' performance data from four graduate programs in social sciences and two graduate mathematics programs for the spring…

Foreign Language (FL) classrooms should be places where, at a minimum, communication is taking place in the foreign language being taught and intercultural understanding is also being developed. However, in countries where the majority of students are from a single cultural background, it is often difficult to keep students on-task if they do not…

While online discussions remain popular in college classrooms, mixed results persist about their effectiveness in eliciting authentic learning. This case study explores how students perceive the influence of the Photovoice method on their authentic learning, critical thinking, engagement, and peer interaction in an asynchronous online discussion.…

A cyber-flipped course was conducted with the flipped classroom pedagogy by using a wholly online approach for all learning activities in asynchronous and synchronous class sessions. Literature suggests that traditional flipped courses can effectively enhance students' learning outcomes in comparison to non-flipped courses. However, conducting all…

This study, in the context of peer-facilitated asynchronous online discussion, explored the characteristics and patterns of students' cognitive presence, and examined the practices that aim to enhance cognitive presence development. Participants were 53 students from a graduate-level online course that focused on the integration of educational…

Given the widespread adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards in the United States, there is a need to study new models of professional development to prepare teachers to enact practice-based visions of science learning and to address problems of access to reach teachers nationwide. While studies of online professional development offer…

This paper investigates student responses to two tools used to create learning environments that encourage the sharing of ideas and discussion in online asynchronous university courses.

Although online course completion rates are commonly believed to be lower than in other delivery modes, some programs achieve equal or better course completion rates. This issue presents studies that suggest certain practices contribute to student success. Readers are invited to contribute to work-in-progress on key factors for a framework of…

This paper discusses the online Juris Doctor Program (JD Program) at RMIT University. The first part of the paper provides a brief overview of the JD Program, the graduate capabilities of the Program and key principles associated with the teaching of law to online postgraduate students. In line with the literature in the area of online teaching…

This case study describes the philosophy underlying the delivery of online programs and courses at the University of Illinois-Springfield. The strategies used to implement the UIS model and the measures used to validate its success are outlined. These factors are reviewed in the context of the Sloan-C Five Pillars for quality learning environments.

This article features Dallas Baptist University (DBU), a private, Christian, liberal arts institution located in the DFW Metroplex. With just over 5,200 students, DBU provides both traditional undergraduate, adult and graduate degrees with the enrollment almost equally divided between the three student groups. Today, DBU offers 34 degree programs…

This case study offers a strategic model of methods and services resulting in relatively high student success rates as defined by course completion of introductory first and second semester online courses. This strategic model is presented in the context of Sloan-C's "Five Pillars of Quality Online Education."

In the U.S., only 38 of every 100 ninth graders enroll in college; of these 38, only 18 complete bachelors' degrees within six years. Asynchronous learning networks (ALN)--asynchronous, highly interactive, instructor-led, resource-rich, cohort-based learning--can yield high success rates. Growing demand for online education and the expectation…