Studying through distance education can be problematic for any student, but it can be worse for rural students for diverse reasons. To ensure that students studying through the open distance learning (ODL) system have an enduring learning experience, ODL builds student support as one of its components. The University of South Africa (Unisa)…

A vast body of research has indicated the importance of distinguishing new vs. continuing students' learning experiences in blended and online environments. Continuing learners may have developed learning and coping mechanisms for "surviving" in such learning environments, while new learners might still need to adjust their learning…

We present an experience of digital storytelling conducted as part of a course for initial teacher training. The students of a special education course produced a digital story as partial fulfillment of their distance learning assignment. We describe the structure of the work completed by the students and discuss the results of a questionnaire…

The article proposes a new way of analysing and understanding blended learning and contributes to current debates about adult learner motivations for study. It argues that, whilst the validity of the Andragogical Model has been criticised, it has provided a useful framework of analysis in the context of blended learning to meet the needs of adult…

Early learning experiences at home and in classrooms build the foundations for children's later success in school and life. The pandemic has upended home life and preschool programs, making it more challenging for both parents and communities to provide optimal learning experiences for young children. These changes are likely to have important…

Student support at Unisa involves a range of stakeholders providing academic and administrative support. The study was conducted among Unisa BCom honours students. The main objective of the study was to determine the educational quality of teaching and learning offered. Students were contacted by e-mail and asked to complete an online…

This study investigated the first year University undergraduates' experiences in the use of open educational resources (OER) in online learning and their in-course achievement. The design selected for the study was survey and quasi-experimental. A total number of 106 University undergraduates participated in the study after a preliminary study was…

Internationalisation in higher education has been shown to provide both intellectual and cultural benefits to students which can help in their future employment. This case study describes student views on learning alongside students from different countries in an online distance learning environment. Seventy-three students undertaking the online…

This article explores the quality of the online learning experience based on the Sloan-C framework and the Online Learning Consortium's (OLC) quality scorecard. The OLC index has been implemented to evaluate quality in online programs from different perspectives. Despite this, the opinions of learners are ignored, and it is built using feedback…

This paper examines a sample of online discussion data from the course forum for the large-scale beginners' Chinese course offered by the UK Open University. This forum is open to all registered students, their participation is completely voluntary and they (rather than tutors) initiate communications. The aim of this study is (i) to seek to…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are being utilised at a rapidly increasing rate, especially in distance education (DE). As a medium of instruction they allow the presenter to simultaneously interact with numerous students at different centres across the country. This study is unique in the sense that a collaborative learning community is created…

This research evaluates the strategies implemented to support the research activities of postgraduate students pursuing online master's programs in the University of the West Indies Open Campus, as well as the activities of their supervisors. The three main strategies employed were (1) the use of a web-based "teaching-learning space" to…

This study examined the development of two Distance Learning (DL) courses and their effect on students' perceptions and learning experiences. Our study included about 260 science and engineering graduate students. Among them, 105 students were divided into two research groups: on-campus students (N=70) and DL students (N=35). These two groups…

This article describes a qualitative study which was undertaken to improve the delivery methods and feedback opportunity in honours mathematics lectures which are delivered through Access Grid Rooms. Access Grid Rooms are facilities that provide two-way video and audio interactivity across multiple sites, with the inclusion of smart boards. The…

The purpose of this study was to test for statistically significant differences between students in an online and traditional (face-to-face) teacher education programs with their perceptions of social connectedness and satisfaction with their learning experiences at a research-intensive institution located in the southern region of the United…