One of the main characteristics of distance education is the absence of face-to-face interaction with instructor and learner as well as learner and learner. The purpose of this article is to explore the issue of social presence and the various innovations used to foster a social presence with distance education programs.

Discussion forums are the primary and most widely used venue for social learning and communication in MOOC context. There has been an interest in the last few years to study the interactions and participation behavior in this environment. This systematic review studied eighty-four papers published between 2013-2017 to provide a state of the art,…

This paper uses quantitative analytics to study talk-based participation in 100 mathematics classrooms across one racially diverse urban school district in the USA. Using the EQUIP observation tool and hierarchical linear modeling, we characterize the quantity and quality of participation for students across 3025 coded turns, by race and gender.…

In this essay I concentrate on a distinct aspect of teaching courses online postpandemic: concrete steps both to ease workload burden and to increase student learning efficacy. There are ten lessons that can facilitate moving instruction online: 1. Organize the Course in Weekly Modules; 2. Communicate on a Regular Schedule; 3. Post Key Lectures;…

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has ignited debates regarding its potential benefits and detriments for education. Despite widespread discussions, insights into GenAI's impact on education have been limited because early studies have often been narrow in scope and focused on specific contexts. Therefore, the purpose of…

The main objective of educational institutions is to achieve the integral development of their students in their learning and knowledge construction process. One way to achieve these objectives is the accompaniment and continuous monitoring of students in this process, adapting the methods to their training needs. In online and mixed teaching…

Underrepresented (UR) students face barriers to help-seeking in traditional classrooms. We predicted these barriers would be ameliorated online. We analyzed online course discussion boards and found UR students asked for help more often than non-UR students and women were more likely than men to ask for help explicitly at least once. Furthermore,…

The purpose of this study was to examine processes experienced by students of different achievement levels in small group discussions in argumentation applications conducted in scientific and socio-scientific issues. Case study which is a qualitative research design was used for the study. In this line, a success test including mechanical subjects…

Classroom discussion boards are a vital part of the online educational experience, providing a venue for peer to peer and student to faculty interactions. However, institutional feedback from students at a large open enrollment university has shown that excess focus on online discussions may lead to fatigue, resulting in lower student…

The growth of technology and the inclusion of "digital natives" as students in the education world have created a demand pull for the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. Dominant among these tools have been wikis, blogs and discussion boards. Distance education experts view the use of these tools as differentiators when compared to…

Existing literature on education and technology has frequently highlighted the usefulness of online discussion forums for distance courses; however, the majority of such investigations have focused their attention only on text-based forums. The objective of this paper is to determine if the embedding of streamed videos in online discussion forums…

Online learning has become a permanent fixture on college campuses. For the past decade, enrollment in online courses has grown faster than the overall student body throughout higher education. This phenomenon is not surprising and, in fact, is part of a history of people seeking more flexible alternatives to traditional, face-to-face instruction.…

Journal clubs have been used to advance students' scientific skills beyond basic knowledge and comprehension, but students often view the traditional format of analyzing reported data and experimental design as laborious and intimidating. As such, the traditional approach can diminish student engagement and enthusiasm for the value of scientific…

Online discussion forums are often the only interaction or communication a student in an online learning environment will have with the course instructor and fellow students. Discussion forums are intended to elicit a range of thinking skills from the students, from purely social interaction to metacognition in order to achieve deep learning.…

As many gender teachers know, distinctions between and among complex terms in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans (gender or sexual), queer (LGBTQ) group are often difficult for students to articulate and identify. In fact, terms like "sex" and "gender" are often conflated in public discourse, and terms like…