After the COVID-19 pandemic forced school buildings to close, online learning became a lifeline for K-12 education. It let schools carry on in "the cloud" when they could not meet in person. But online learning's potential benefits for K-12 go well beyond providing stop-gap solutions during school closures. It offers an opportunity to…

This dissertation centers on competencies for K-12 online and blended teaching. Article 1, published in Distance Education, is the literature review, which compares K-12 online and blended teaching competencies. We found that online and blended teaching share personalization as the most salient competency, but that blended teaching competencies…

Several learning technologies have been explored in higher education around the world. Learning has become more mobile, massive, open, flexible, blended, informal, audio-visual based, highly collaborative, and activity driven. While the traditional classroom still exists, it is being challenged. Increasingly checking emails in front of a PC or…

Numerous formats exist for online course delivery: pure online, blended or hybrid, flipped and web-enhanced. The literature is replete with comparison studies on the efficacy of online, hybrid and traditional format courses. However, the self-paced online course, a relatively new and rare variation, has received very little coverage in the body of…

There are two primary challenges for instructors in offering a high-quality course at large scale. The first is scaling educational experiences to such a large audience. The second major challenge encountered is that of enabling adaptivity of the educational experience. This thesis addresses both major challenges in the way of high-quality…

The purpose of this study was to examine brick-and-mortar and online teacher best practice themes using thematic analysis and a newly developed theory-based analytic process entitled Synthesized Thematic Analysis Criteria (STAC). The STAC was developed to facilitate the meaningful thematic analysis of research based best practices of K-12…

This paper outlines the findings of a review that examined the literature around current practice in one-to-one online tuition in schools and higher education. It summarizes the purposes, contexts, scope, and methods of 17 core studies identified through a systematic literature search. It then uses a conceptual framework focusing on pedagogical…

The study investigated the differential impact of sense of classroom community on effort in online versus face-to-face courses while controlling for potential effects of gender and team learning orientation. The interaction effects from ANOVA results suggested a gender difference across the two course delivery formats, with male students expending…

In recent years, thanks to the evolution of the Internet, wide availability of classroom computers and increased broadband access, blended learning is emerging as a new tool in the K-12 educational toolkit. Defined as learning that combines online and face-to-face approaches, blended learning is accomplished through the combined use of virtual and…