The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching. While the move to online teaching and learning was inevitable, many learners, especially in rural and remote areas, found that online schooling had…

This paper examines how student effort, consistency, motivation, and marginal learning, influence student grades in an online course. We use data from eleven Microeconomics courses taught online for a total of 212 students. Our findings show that consistency, or less time variation, is a statistically significant explanatory variable, whereas…

The integration of technology in classrooms is rapidly emerging as a way to provide more educational opportunities for students. As virtual learning environments become more popular, evaluating the impact of this technology on student success is vital. "Exploring the Effectiveness of Online Education in K-12 Environments" combines…

Digital learning makes possible the "unbundling" of school provisions--that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and more customized ways. At the same time, because it destandardizes and decentralizes educational delivery, digital education is far harder to bring under the yoke of the…

The last decade has seen a great variety in the ways in which instructors have incorporated the World Wide Web into their traditional classroom courses; however, this combination has not always translated into changes or improvements in teaching and learning. The real challenge has proved to be not the addition of web resources to the traditional…

Using data collected from a state sample of principals in Illinois this study examines the role of online and blended instruction in addressing concerns and issues facing the American high school. In comparing the results in this study with those of a national sample of principals, most of the findings are comparable even though the present study…

Distance Education (DE) is one of the well-known methods of instruction and learning at many colleges and universities throughout the United States as well as other countries. Instructors teaching online courses need some form of training prior to teaching online classes. Most higher education institutions use some form of Learning Management…

Over the past decade, online courses and entire online degree programs have been made available, serving millions of students in higher education. These online courses largely have been designed and taught using the theoretical concepts and practical strategies of Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN). During 2003-04, approximately two million…

Although online course completion rates are commonly believed to be lower than in other delivery modes, some programs achieve equal or better course completion rates. This issue presents studies that suggest certain practices contribute to student success. Readers are invited to contribute to work-in-progress on key factors for a framework of…

This article reviews current best practices of online learning and teaching. Considerations to the following topics are discussed: What does it take to excel in the online environment? How are multiple intelligences utilized in the online classroom? How can learning objectives be met by using best practices in online learning? How are the art of…

This case study describes the philosophy underlying the delivery of online programs and courses at the University of Illinois-Springfield. The strategies used to implement the UIS model and the measures used to validate its success are outlined. These factors are reviewed in the context of the Sloan-C Five Pillars for quality learning environments.

In the U.S., only 38 of every 100 ninth graders enroll in college; of these 38, only 18 complete bachelors' degrees within six years. Asynchronous learning networks (ALN)--asynchronous, highly interactive, instructor-led, resource-rich, cohort-based learning--can yield high success rates. Growing demand for online education and the expectation…

Although there are many reasons why students dropout of college courses, those reasons may be unique for students who are enrolled in an online program. Issues of isolation, disconnectedness, and technological problems may be factors that influence a student to leave a course. To understand these factors, an online survey was developed to collect…

Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an…

The Early Childhood Technology Integrated Instructional System 3 (EC-TIIS 3), housed in the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood (the Center) within the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University (WIU), was funded in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) as a…