America's K-12 education system faces three significant challenges: (1) increased global demands for skilled workers, (2) significant financial shortfalls, and (3) a looming teacher shortage. Independently, these factors present significant challenges for U.S. schools. In combination, they create a national imperative for swift action to create a…

America's K-12 education system faces three significant challenges: (1) increased global demands for skilled workers; (2) significant financial shortfalls; and (3) a looming teacher shortage. Independently, these factors present significant challenges for U.S. schools. In combination, they create a national imperative for swift action to create a…

America's K-12 education system faces three significant challenges: (1) increased global demands for skilled workers, (2) significant financial shortfalls, and (3) a looming teacher shortage. Independently, these factors present significant challenges for U.S. schools. In combination, they create a national imperative for swift action to create a…

America's K-12 education system faces three significant challenges: (1) increased global demands for skilled workers, (2) significant financial shortfalls, and (3) a looming teacher shortage. Independently, these factors present significant challenges for U.S. schools. In combination, they create a national imperative for swift action to create a…

This qualitative ethnographic study examines five American teenagers' historical and current digitally-mediated multiliteracy practices within digital popular culture. The participants included three male and two female students of a private high school in the Midwestern United States. The study is framed by the notion that literacy is a socially,…

The effectiveness of a reading intervention using the whole-word multimedia software "Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) for Clicker" was compared to a reading intervention using traditional ORT Big Books. Developing literacy skills and attitudes towards learning to read were assessed in a group of 17 struggling beginner readers aged 5-6 years. Each child…

This paper reports the results of the first phase of a mixed methods study investigating the attitudes of students enrolled in a distance education MBA program towards interacting more with other students online. It grapples with the issue of whether students enrolled in a successful distance education program grounded in instructivist and…

Instruction in higher education has developed significantly over the past two decades, influenced by two trends: promotion of active learning methods and integration of web technology in e-Learning. Many studies found that active teaching improves students' success, involvement and thinking skills. Nevertheless, internationally, most instructors…

Second Life has become increasingly popular with educators and educational institutions, because of the educational possibilities it seems to offer. While there has been a lot of hype and academic publications about educational design or the theoretical framing of teaching in virtual environments, there have been few publications focusing on…

Blended learning, mixing online and face-to-face learning modes, has been increasingly adopted in training with the expectation that it will help solve transfer problems and will lend other educational benefits. While there is a set of knowledge about design for facilitating transfer, it has not been investigated in a blended environment context.…

This study provides a simultaneous examination of all components of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000; Anderson, Rourke, Garrison & Archer, 2001; and Rourke, Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 1999) and seeks to extend previous work into the nature, development, and relationships between the constructs of…

Over the last decade, online distance education has become a common mode of study in most states in the USA, where it is known as virtual schooling (VS), but many people have misconceptions about it. Pre-service teachers' personal histories as students and their preconceptions, misconceptions, and concerns influence pre-service teacher training…

Imaginary worlds have been devised by artists and commentators for centuries to focus satirical attention on society's problems. The increasing sophistication of three-dimensional graphics software is generating comparable "virtual worlds" for educational usage. Can such worlds play a satirical role suggesting developments in distance…

Due to the social changes brought about in no small part by Web 2.0 tools, the potential impact of the blog writing phenomenon upon teaching and learning contexts reveals an important area for consideration for all university educators, and in particular for e-learning practitioners. Today, web users may access a wide variety of media to express…

The development of technology has made adult and higher education learning opportunities increasingly more accessible to a growing number of people. With the number of courses steadily increasing to meet students' needs and demands, and because programs are likewise changing to incorporate more online learning opportunities, international, English…