This study examines relationships among several variables within the context of online learning in higher education including self-regulated effort, maintained situational interest, gender differences, and age-related factors. Analyzing data from a diverse Open Cyber University of Korea student sample, the research highlights a positive…

The idea of social capital as the value obtainable from an individual's social relationships has been used to study many organizational and social settings, but rarely virtual environments. We used data from an online higher education institution to examine how an individual's social capital derived from her position in the social structure…

Online learning environments afford opportunities for participation and equally offer a new perspective on engaging vicariously. Drawing on the concept of vicarious learning and taking account of the roles of input and interaction for language development, this paper reports on an enquiry into students' retrospective use of recorded group…

Massive Open Online Courses and e-learning represent the future of the teaching-learning processes through the development of Information and Communication Technologies. They are the response to the new education needs of society. However, this future also presents many challenges such as the processing of online forums when a huge number of…

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a rapidly evolving phenomenon which has stimulated discussion in universities around the world. A central theme of these discussions, and much of the published literature on the phenomenon, is the potential of the MOOC to disrupt the way universities do business. The aim of this narrative literature review…

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…

In the context of the hype, promise and perils of Big Data and the currently dominant paradigm of data-driven decision-making, it is important to critically engage with the potential of Big Data for higher education. We do not question the potential of Big Data, but we do raise a number of issues, and present a number of theses to be seriously…

This article reviews key findings from six surveys of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) across the UK higher education (HE) sector, conducted by Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association in association with Jisc. Updating the findings presented by Jenkins, Browne, Walker, and Hewitt [2010. The development of technology enhanced…

The concept of language learner autonomy has influenced Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to the extent that Schwienhorst (2012) informs us of a paradigm change in CALL design in the light of learner autonomy. CALL is not considered a tool anymore, but a learner environment available to language learners anywhere in the world. Based on a…

Within the constructivist framework of online distance education the feedback process is considered a key element in teachers' roles because it can promote the regulation of learning. Therefore, faced with the need to guide and train teachers in the kind of feedback to provide and how to provide it, we establish three aims for this research:…

There is an increasing development of courses and course components taught through teaching and learning dialogues online yet there is little secure knowledge regarding the educational quality of these dialogues. Drawing on contemporary sociocultural research, this paper adapts a well-established analytical framework (see Mercer, 1995) that has…

This research focused on the undergraduate learners' perceptions of blended learning at the Arab Open University--Bahrain Branch (AOU-BH). It also focused on factors that influence learners' perceptions and examined the relationships between learners' perceptions and their particular demographic characteristics (age, gender, educational level,…