A large number of teachers and tutors of English as a Second Language (ESL) lack professional-level preparation. The Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL) program is being developed to prepare untrained, novice, volunteer ESL teachers to be more successful. In contrast with previous programs…

The aim of this study is to characterize the current status of blended learning in Portugal, given that b-learning has grown exponentially in the Portuguese market over recent years. 38 organizations (representing 68% of all institutions certified to provide distance training by the Government Labour Office--DGERT-) participated in this study. The…

Susan Patrick is the president and chief executive officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). She is the former director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. As director, she published the U.S. National Educational Technology Plan for Congress and managed research and…

This research paper investigates if the traditional lecture is no longer appropriate for Neomillennial Learning Styles and whether an alternative blended approach could/should be used? Over the past decade the lecture as we know it, has gradually been under attack from constructivists, Twigg (1999) for example argues that the lecture is in the…

The Classroom Community Scale (CCS) has been utilized in previous research to measure sense of community of learners including those learners in blended learning environments. In the current study, the CCS was examined with respect to its psychometric properties in the blended learning environment. Reliability analyses indicate an acceptable level…

This article examines how Moodle, as an open-source Learning Management System, can be made more interoperable. The authors tested two software standards, LAMS and RELOAD, compatible with socio-constructivism norms. The analysis showed that pedagogic activities created with the LAMS-IMS Learning Design Level A Format are useable with Moodle but…

Educators and students living in the digital age are faced with complex problems that are forcing them to seek collaborative solutions. These problems can be addressed through the successful application of digital technologies and pedagogies that enhance the educational, social and economic prospects of students. The main aim of this study was to…

The construct of Universal Design (UD) has been used in a number of fields such as engineering and architecture to design and produce products and services that are usable by people with a wide variety of characteristics. The field of UD supports a framework that can also be used to enhance the field of education. A number of constructs have been…

This paper begins with a brief introduction to blended learning (BL), recognising the important contributions to learning that can be obtained from the use of methods which combine the New Information and Communications Technologies (NICT) with more traditional methods. The paper goes onto describe the bases, tasks and methodology for developing…

This paper reviews a range of accessibility tools and evaluates how successful they have been in helping teachers in higher education and further education develop accessible e-learning materials and activities for disabled learners. It is argued that these accessibility specific tools have had limited success to date, and that there may therefore…

Pedagogic Conversational Agents are computer applications that can interact with students in natural language. They have been used with satisfactory results on the instruction of several domains. The authors believe that they could also be useful for the instruction of Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education. Therefore, in this paper, the…

This paper reports on the findings of a case study that investigated how blended teaching and learning was implemented in a New Zealand secondary school. An ecological perspective was taken to clarify the complexity of blended teaching and learning implementation by researching the roles of students, teachers, school leaders and other educational…

This article attempts to investigate the learning processes in blended language learning through assessing sources of information: logs, chat and forum scripts, and semi-structured interviews. Creating a MOODLE-based parallel component to face-to-face instruction for a group of EFL learners, we probed into 2,984 logged actions providing raw…

In modern business environments, work and tasks have become more complex and require more interdisciplinary skills to complete, including collaborative and computing skills for website design. However, the computing education in Taiwan can hardly be recognised as effective in developing and transforming students into competitive employees. In this…

The study reported here sought to determine if the use of distance education lessons for teaching limited resource participants in a nutrition education program (NEP) is as effective as face-to-face methodology. One hundred and six participants were in the experimental group. Data was gathered at entry and examined behavior change, nutrient intake…