The opening up of online education in the Australian tertiary sector has made higher education accessible for a wide range of students, including those living in rural and regional areas. While student numbers continue to grow as a result of this opportunity, there are increasing concerns regarding low student retention and progression rates for…

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of structured discussion by giving participants in online discussion groups different roles in transactional distance perception and knowledge sharing behaviors. In the study, a quasi-experimental design was utilized with pretest and posttest control groups. The study was conducted with 111…

Online interaction has been associated with positive outcomes, academically and psychologically. Regarding the latter, social connectedness has been recognised as an important outcome on the basis of its link to subjective well-being and course satisfaction. In adult educational settings, how online interaction can foster social connectedness has…

Research about adolescents sharing creative writing in interest-driven online communities has suggested that teachers can play important roles in helping young writers realize the potential of online spaces. Framed by sociocultural notions of new literacies and a conceptual framework theorizing the rhetorical situation when sharing writing in…

The purpose of this study was to address a writing teacher's perspective about integrating Facebook, a social networking site, into a university-level English writing course in Taiwan. Data, including interviews with the teacher and class postings on Facebook, were analyzed inductively, qualitatively, and interpretively, resulting in three…

In this study, I considered the development of mathematical meaning related to the Invertible Matrix Theorem (IMT) for both a classroom community and an individual student over time. In this particular linear algebra course, the IMT was a core theorem in that it connected many concepts fundamental to linear algebra through the notion of…

While the current reform efforts in Bangladesh require a substantive change in how science is taught, an equally substantive change is needed in the culture of professional practice. This study will, therefore, investigate how science teachers' learning in a professional learning community (PLC) influences the ways in which participant teachers…

This article presents research on students' experiences of learning through a blend of face-to-face and online discussion. The participants in our study were students enrolled in a foreign policy course at a major Australian university. Students' conceptions of learning through discussion, and their approaches to both face-to-face and online…

Feedback is central to pedagogic theory, and if feedback is to be effective, students need to engage with it and apply it at some point in the future. However, student dissatisfaction with feedback--as evidenced in the National Student Survey--suggests that there are problems which limit student engagement with feedback, such as their perception…

Colleges and universities recognize that one of the primary goals of higher education is to promote students' ability to think critically. Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS), this study examined the relationship between faculty teaching practices and the development of students' critical thinking skills,…

The facilitation of critical thinking is one of the most frequently discussed potential benefits of the asynchronous online discussion environment, but many studies have reported that it does not occur to any great extent. This study investigated the effect of information provided to students on the facilitation of their critical thinking outcomes…

This paper examines students' mixed perceptions of the use of active learning techniques in undergraduate science lectures. Written comments from over 250 students offered an in-depth view of why students perceive these techniques as helping or hindering their learning and experience. Fourth- and fifth-year students were more likely to view…

This paper analyses the participatory space for political debate opened up by social media in Vanuatu with reference to the implementation of a recent language-in-education policy, jointly funded by the governments of Vanuatu, Australia and New Zealand. Although Vanuatu appears to have been debating the same language issues for several decades,…

Ensuring quality library instruction in an online-exclusive First Year Writing (FYW) course is important and challenging. Assessing what the students learned and how is equally important. The authors collaborate and co-teach the information literacy portion of an online-exclusive second semester FYW course at the University of Tennessee at…

Online education has long been suffering from high dropout rate and low achievement. However, both asynchronous and synchronous online instructions have to become effective to serve as a quick response to maintain undisrupted learning during the COVID-19 outbreak. The purpose of the present study was to examine student engagement, learning…