All schools can benefit from giving students the option of online learning, but for many rural schools, online learning is a lifeline. In the past two years, Lane Education Service District in Oregon, USA, has developed online resources for 14 Lane County school districts, which vary in size from 170 students to as many as 17,000. Many of the…

In his keynote address at the "New York Times" Schools for Tomorrow 2011 Fall Conference, Dr. Larry Summers (2011) suggested that technology implementations have an unusual growth pattern. New technology innovations usually require more time to "catch on" than one might expect, but once they catch on, their use spreads more quickly than anyone can…

Desktop virtual reality is an emerging educational technology that offers many potential benefits for learners in online learning contexts; however, a limited body of research is available that connects current multimedia learning techniques with these new forms of media. Because most formal online learning is delivered using learning management…

Although learning science in informal non-school environments has shown great promise in terms of increasing interest and engagement, few studies have systematically investigated and produced evidence of improved conceptual knowledge and cognitive skills. Furthermore, little is known about how digital technologies that are increasingly being used…

In this knowledge-based economy, corporations invest millions of dollars in training and expect a return on that investment; similarly, employees have a vested interest in wanting to further their knowledge and their ability to contribute. The types of e-learning strategies and instructional methods being employed elude the use of asynchronous…

This paper presents an original approach to designing social media that support informal learning in the digital workplace. It adapts design-based research to take into account the embeddedness of interactions within digitally mediated work-based contexts. The approach is demonstrated through the design, implementation, and evaluation of software…

This study developed a survey to explore students' preferences in constructivist context-aware ubiquitous learning environments. A constructivist context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) environment survey (CULES) was developed, consisting of eight scales, including ease of use, continuity, relevance, adaptive content, multiple sources,…

This study explores and describes different viewpoints on blended e-Education by using Q methodology to identify students' perspectives and classify them into perceptional types. It is also designed to examine possible relationships among learner's perceptional type, characteristics (i.e., academic self-efficacy, interest in blended e-Education,…

Between 2008 and 2010, Lund University took part in three international benchmarking projects, "E-xcellence+," the "eLearning Benchmarking Exercise 2009," and the "First Dual-Mode Distance Learning Benchmarking Club." A comparison of these models revealed a rather high level of correspondence. From this finding and…

Adaptive e-learning materials can help teachers to educate heterogeneous student groups. This study provides empirical data about the way academic students differ in their learning when using adaptive e-learning materials. Ninety-four students participated in the study. We determined characteristics in a heterogeneous student group by collecting…

Research on academic self-regulation suggests that students who are successful in academic settings tend to possess and use effective self-regulative learning characteristics such as intrinsic goal orientation and self-efficacy. Social-cognitive theories also emphasize that learning occurs through interactions between learners and the learning…

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a contract to a team of education, youth development, and web development specialists to develop an online professional learning community for grantees in the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC). The online community, You for Youth (Y4Y, www.Y4Y.ed.gov) will support afterschool…

This mixed methods concurrent triangulation design study was predicated upon two models that advocated a connection between teaching presence and perceived learning: the Community of Inquiry Model of Online Learning developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000); and the Online Interaction Learning Model by Benbunan-Fich, Hiltz, and Harasim…

It is not well understood how specific design practices and strategies affect learning for students engaged in online coursework. While various instructional design practices that are claimed to be effective can readily be found in diverse educational contexts, some suggest that most have been perpetuated primarily through unchallenged tradition…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between employees' reading skills, E-learning readability, student learning, and student satisfaction. The Tests of Adult Basic Education (TABE) form 10 Level A instrument evaluated student-reading skills. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index course assessed…