Background: Online synchronous learning in higher education frequently struggles to overcome the social presence gap, resulting in dissatisfaction and poor learning outcomes. Objectives: This study examined the effectiveness of desktop-based virtual reality (VR) social platforms compared to video conferencing (VC) platforms in enhancing students'…

Purpose: Telepractice in speech-language pathology is a continually evolving part of clinical service delivery. Despite its popularity, little evidence exists on how to educate beginning-level student clinicians in telepractice provision. The purpose of this study is to assess the perceived comfort level of first-year graduate clinicians providing…

Writing teachers often express they have insufficient time to provide adequate feedback during writing workshop conferences. Existing research has identified the importance of providing feedback to students and acknowledges the difficulty in finding the vast amount of time this requires. Educators have considered using digital tools as a means of…

Blended synchronous learning (BSL) represents several contexts that enable to bring remote students into the classroom, in real time, by the means of videoconferencing, web conferencing and virtual world. As BSL seems to be more and more implemented in many higher education institutions, especially in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic,…

This study was completed in two phases, the first of which employed systematic literature analysis of collegiate instructional use of web conferencing followed by a case study of a multi-campus collaborative course utilizing web conferencing. Results provide implications for collegiate educators seeking to employ web conferencing for synchronous…

This paper describes a mixed-methods investigation into whether an asynchronous, virtual collaboration with Japanese peers helped pre-service social studies teachers in the U.S. demonstrate civic competence as it relates to international and global education. After the collaboration, most students described themselves as better-prepared world…

Most online courses rely solely on asynchronous text-based online communication. This type of communication can foster anytime, anywhere reflection, critical thinking, and deep learning. However, it can also frustrate participants because of the lack of spontaneity and visual cues and the time it takes for conversations to develop and feedback to…

This dissertation examines the implementation of web conferencing technology in online graduate courses within management, engineering, and computer science programs. Though the spread of learning management systems over the past two decades has been dramatic, the use of web conferencing technologies has curiously lagged. The real-time…

This case study examined student preference for delivery mode of online courses in two graduate degree programs in Library and Information Science. Within-group and between-groups comparisons indicated a distinct preference across the institutions. Findings from focus groups conducted with two cohorts of students enrolled in a federally funded…

Telephone conference presentation delivery was compared to face-to-face classroom delivery in an undergraduate business course setting to assess whether concern over presenting in front of the class and/or gender impacted presentation mode preference. After completing a classroom exercise, students (n = 102) were surveyed and asked to compare…

This case study reports on a teacher training experience for college professors in which participants were trained, taking advantage of technological tools, in two main teaching competences. First, professors were trained to use technology to enrich students' learning outcomes. Second, they applied strategies of significant learning in the design…

This paper reports on a pilot investigation into web conferencing in a distance learning module. It focuses on the perceptions and experiences of the tutors, all of whom were new to the web conferencing environment, but were experienced in online teaching. A number of web conferencing tutorials were studied through the collection of various…

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between media, learners' perception of social presence, and output in communicative learning using synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). In this study, we developed four types of SCMC: videoconferencing (image and voice), audioconferencing (voice but no image), text chat with image (image…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role and learning outcomes of three types of classroom observations in a teacher education methods course: video-based CD-ROMS, videoconference-supported observations, and traditional face-to-face observations. It was not the goal of this study to compare the effectiveness of each type of observation to…

Many studies report information overload as one of the main problems that students encounter in online learning via computer-mediated communication. This study aimed to explore the sources of online students' information overload and offer suggestions for increasing students' cognitive resources for learning. Participants were 12 graduate students…