A recent major trend in distance education is the emergence of K-12 virtual schools. This evaluative case study looked at the issues encountered and lessons learned by one school district during the first year of a virtual high school program. The purpose of the evaluation was to examine what happened when the school district initiated its virtual…

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of an innovative technologically mediated intervention for argumentation pedagogy in two classes comprising 17- to 18-year-old students in Singapore. The design research involves integrating the "Second Life" immersive virtual environment and web-based scaffolding through a customized…

Online teachers' perceptions of online teaching standards published in 2006 by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the National Education Association (NEA). Interviews with two teachers from each of the four online schools were studied following an online survey of 49 online teachers from these schools. Overall, participants reported…

In the field of design and engineering education, the fast and expansive evolution of information and communication technologies is steadily converting traditional learning approaches into more advanced ones. Facilitated by Broadband (high bandwidth) personal computers, distance learning has developed into web-hosted electronic learning. The…

Many have argued that interactive 3D virtual environments have great educational potential due to their ability to engage learners in the exploration, construction and manipulation of virtual objects, structures and metaphorical representations of ideas. Although learning benefits have been demonstrated in research settings, and substantial usage…

Current technology enables schools to provide remote or virtual computing labs that can be implemented in multiple ways ranging from remote access to banks of dedicated workstations to sophisticated access to large-scale servers hosting virtualized workstations. This paper reports on the implementation of a specific lab using remote access to…

Information technology (IT) innovations have and continue to have a significant impact on international marketing practice and customer interactions. With the marketing environment becoming increasingly dependent on technology, marketing teaching in higher education faces a challenging task of effectively leveraging technology in diverse learning…

As online courses are offered as an alternative to traditional instruction in higher education, there are considerable debates about online teaching and learning. Some believe that online education shows promise as an innovative and creative pedagogical method; 67% of colleges and universities agree that online education is the single significant…

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a study conducted to investigate how the attributes of 3-D technology such as avatars, 3-D space, and comic style bubble dialogue boxes affect participants' social, cognitive, and teaching presences in a blended problem-based learning environment. The community of inquiry model was adopted…

This article attempts to describe students' process of learning physics using the notion of experiencing variation as the basic mechanism for learning, and thus explores what variation, with respect to a particular object of learning, that students experience in their process of constituting understanding. Theoretically, the analysis relies on…

Virtual learning is not for every student, but it's not science fiction, either. Right now in Michigan, it's being used by thousands of students in hundreds of virtual courses in urban, rural and suburban school districts. In fact, Michigan has been seen as a national leader in virtual learning. This study analyzes the financial costs and academic…

This study explores the use of the virtual classroom which has been created in "myVLE", a learning management system used by the Open University Malaysia (OUM). The virtual classroom in "myVLE" is an asynchronous-based online learning environment that delivers course materials to learners and provides collaboration and…

The Community of Inquiry Framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) has been an important contribution to the online distance education field and has been useful in providing researchers with the construct of "teaching presence". Teaching presence as described by the framework provides insight into the types of interactions…

Faculty who have taught in a traditional classroom are finding themselves having to teach in a setting in which they are unable to interact face-to-face with their students. Online instruction increases yearly. An important factor in the success of online instruction is the degree of student engagement. Though academic content remains…

The purpose of this study was to examine Alabama community college presidents' perceptions regarding distance education. Further, this study was intended to determine the adequacy of the training opportunities and support for faculty that teach distance education courses and what services are available for distance education students. This study…