The first-year experience for students enrolled in an online degree program, particularly the orientation and the first course experience, is critical to success and completion. The experience of one online university in improving persistence through enhancing orientation and the first academic course is presented. Factors impacting persistence…

There is little discussion in the Design-Based Research (DBR) literature on how to design an intervention that has the potential to be highly effective. The act of designing is usually viewed as engineering something from theory or research on best practices. This paper challenges that universal belief and presents successful design as an…

This document contains the following nine appendixes of the main report, "What Does It Cost to Educate California's Students? A Professional Judgment Approach. Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts II": (1) Professional Judgement Panel General Instructions; (2) Professional Judgement Panel. Task Instructions; (3) School Resource…

For the forty-fourth time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented online and onsite during the annual AECT Convention. Volume 1 contains papers dealing primarily with research and development topics. Papers dealing with…