Humanising pedagogy has been a focus of recent research as more universities move to online and blended models of instruction. Online learning has been linked to feelings of isolation, disconnection, and depersonalisation of the learning experience for many students. In South Africa, the shift to online instruction took place in the context of the…

In a post-COVID world, online education is more important than ever. Understanding how to make digital learning environments more humanized for learners can lead to more engaged learners. This study explored the experiences of 56 online graduate students to understand what components of asynchronous, traditionally formatted online courses centered…

Remote teaching can be both challenging and motivating. Professors and lecturers have developed innovative strategies to improve students' education and engage students in synchronous and asynchronous classes. In this Illuminations paper, we describe BodyWorks, online tools to support courses in physiology, motor control, and biomechanics. The…

Traditional design education models foreground place-based learning and teaching approaches that situate educators and students together in the studio. This experience enables an engaged and participatory teaching practice in which over-the-shoulder feedback and peer-to-peer critique become essential formal and informal learning interactions.…

The number of fully online asynchronous undergraduate mathematics courses is growing rapidly, making it imperative that the instructional choices that are chosen by instructors and their effects on students' opportunities to learn in the online learning environment be further explored. Therefore, this research aims to understand instructors'…

This empirical study is conducted in a blended learning setting of a technology-focused private university in Bangladesh to offer a model that could help attain a comprehensive goal of blended learning. The main objectives of this study are to examine course design in a blended learning setting, strategies adopted by the course teachers to…

Building a sense of community (SoC) is an important process in the success of distance education and students' retention. However, developing a community in online learning environments is not an easy task. The purpose of this research study is to explore perceptions of graduate students on SoC and learning after using different collaborative…

This qualitative case study explored how course context, such as course design, facilitation, and community, supports students' basic psychological needs and thus shapes their situational motivation to participate in asynchronous online discussions in different course contexts. Three upper-level undergraduate courses in different disciplines were…

The narrative in this paper focuses on a discourse by the authors regarding the ideal method of delivery for online instruction. A research study was conducted with 20 experienced online learners who also happened to have experience with online instructional design. The outcomes of the study provide insight regarding the preferred method of online…

The research described in this article explored the efficacy of a novel teaching strategy to recreate classroom debates online. Using a structured approach and collaborative group work, the researchers developed an approach that students found very useful in six different dimensions: enhancement of active learning, critical thinking, interaction…

To investigate how physics students perceived the sudden shift to online learning at the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, 18 semistructured interviews were conducted with university students in Austria, Croatia, and Germany. Based on the interviews, a questionnaire was developed and data from N ¼ 578 physics students from five universities in…

The purpose of this study was to explore the types of online tools and strategies used with problem-based learning. The target population for this study consisted of instructional designers who were currently working in the field and have four or more years of experience in designing problem-based curriculum using synchronous and asynchronous…

Online education has shown consistent growth in social work curricula over the past two decades despite some questions about the effectiveness of virtual environments in teaching critical elements of social work practice and professional competency. With the COVID-19 pandemic, programs have been forced to exclusively utilize online teaching…

This paper summarizes the author's experiences with transitioning from face-to-face to online General Chemistry Zoom sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic was a Herculean task for instructors during Spring 2020. Instead of adapting completely new strategies for online teaching, the…

Understanding the relationship between social interaction patterns and cognitive engagement levels has critical implications on collaborative learning theory, pedagogy, and technology. This study used a multi-method approach to examine the relationship between students' social participatory roles and cognitive engagement levels within asynchronous…