Many universities in Ghana have had a desire to ensure equitable access to formal tertiary education for the growing number of the working public who have sought to improve or better their educational status in tertiary institutions. For many of these working public or individuals, it is almost impossible to stay off work to enrol in these…

The purpose of this basic interpretive qualitative study (Merriam, 2009) was to understand the factors that excellent online faculty perceived as important to the development of presence in their online courses. Eight faculty members at two institutions in the northwest region of the United States participated in the study. Data were collected…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have developed rapidly and become tremendously popular because of their plentiful gamification designs, such as reputation points, rewards, and goal setting. Although previous studies have mentioned a broad range of gamification designs that might influence MOOC learner engagement, most gamified MOOCs fail to…

This mixed-method pilot study investigated the impact of a custom Short Message Service (SMS) reminder system developed to help students reduce procrastination and increase performance on weekly content-related quizzes in a high-enrollment hybrid online course. Text message reminders were sent to three students with high procrastination and low…

This study examined participants' learning experiences in the context of a six-week massive open online course (MOOC) in journalism with five thousand students from 137 countries. Three research questions were asked: (1) Who are the students and why are they enrolled in this MOOC?, (2) How much time have the students spent in taking this MOOC…

Bryant Griffith is a Regents Professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and Director of the Curriculum and Instruction Doctoral Program. Previously, he was Professor and Director of the School of Education at Acadia University, and Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Calgary. His research interests include situated…

The purpose of this research was to analyze the experience of post-secondary first time online students combining time spent in the classroom-workshop with online course access, and their interactions with instructors. In the following discussion, and following the Cleveland et al. [1] model, a comparison between the categories "student's…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the experiences of instructional designers and professors during the online course development process and to determine if their experiences had an effect on the process itself. To gain an understanding of their experiences, open-ended interviews were conducted, seeking descriptions of…

This study examined students' use of self-regulation strategies in fully online and blended courses in a rural high school in northeast Georgia. An examination of self-regulation strategies between and within ethnic groups, gender, students' grade level, and students enrolled or not enrolled in online or blended courses was conducted. Students (n…

This report examines factors associated with integration of online learning in Sydney region high schools. Past studies have shown that schools can be identified as operating at a certain level of use--ranging from non-use, through stages such as entry, and adaptation, arriving at transformation--when a focus on technology shifts to a focus on the…

We present the results of an interview study investigating student experiences in two online introductory computer science courses. Our theoretical approach is situated at the intersection of two research traditions: "distance and adult education research," which tends to be sociologically oriented, and "computer science education…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover how adult learners from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) experienced online distance learning. As the amalgamation of online distance education has become integrated in all facets of education within the past decade, learners in BVI had the opportunity to experience this alternative mode…

Web-based learning has been proposed as a convenient way to provide professional development experiences. Despite quantitative evidence that online instruction is equivalent to traditional methods (Russell, 2001), the efficiency of this approach has not been extensively studied among teachers. This case report describes learning in an online…

Synchronous communication has a great potential to increase individual participation and group collaboration. Despite increasing use, scant research has been conducted on variables impacting successful synchronous learning. This study focuses on learner experiences in a real-time communication mediated by the Breeze web-based collaboration system.…