This qualitative teacher research study employed narrative inquiry in order to gain greater understanding of how secondary teachers and students made connections using digital online media. Interviews, focus groups, internet artifacts, and other demographic data were used in this interpretivist study. The teacher and student participants utilized…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of female adult learners pursuing graduate degrees online. As online graduate programs have become increasingly popular and more readily available in the last decade, more women than men are enrolling in online graduate programs in addition to…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Federal Update: U.S. Department of Education Receives Requests for NCLB Waivers from Seven More States; Receives…

The consequences of failing core academic courses during the first year of high school are dire. In the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), only about one-fifth of off-track freshmen--students who fail more than one semester of a core academic course and/or fail to earn enough credits to be promoted to 10th grade--graduate high school, compared with…

This paper is part of a work-in-progress that reports on the design, development, and evaluation of a Digital Collaborative Strategic Reading (DCSR) application with regard to its effectiveness in improving English as a second language (ESL) reading comprehension. The DCSR application allows users to read collaboratively on multitouch and…

In this study, we have investigated developmental patterns of virtual groups in the e-learning environment. Our findings suggest that for virtual groups formed for the purpose of e-learning, dependency and inclusion characterize the initial stage of group development, as such characteristics reinforce cooperative relationships and help to build a…

The past decade has witnessed an explosion in online learning opportunities for post-secondary students throughout the United States. The university has developed a Faculty Online Observation (FOO) model to allow for an annual observation of online adjunct faculty with a focus on five major areas of facilitation. To test the effectiveness and…

The real potential of ICT is the way it changes learners to become autonomous in their learning process. E-learning also plays a crucial role in today's life and in modern education. Its importance lies in the fact that people are finding that e-learning can make a remarkable change in teaching/ or learning: to how quickly they master a skill; how…

What personality factors make for a successful hybrid L2 learning experience? While previous studies have examined online learning in comparative terms (i.e. Which format is better: in class or hybrid?), this study examines certain personality and cognitive factors that might define the ideal hybrid language learner. All informants studied…

The technology has embraced the innovative learning methodologies. Distance Learning has taken the place of traditional face-to-face educational environment. The purpose of this study was to compare the level of student satisfaction of graduate distance learning educational psychology course to a traditional classroom educational psychology course…

This study examines online mentor roles and effects with the online mentoring process in computer-supported collaborative learning environments in communities of in-service teachers. Interest in the online mentors' activity encompassed their participation in the online interactions, the influence of their activity on participants' patterns of…

This study investigated outsourcing of the development of visual, animated and interactive learning objects for mathematics education by a Norwegian university to software vendors in China. It sought to understand the challenges in this outsourcing engagement and competences needed to meet the challenges. The authors tested outsourcing strategies…

Storytelling may be a powerful instructional approach for engaging learners and facilitating e-learning. However, relatively little is known about how to apply story within the context of systematic instructional design processes and claims for the effectiveness of storytelling in training and education have been primarily anecdotal and…

Interactive instructional methods are characterized by engaging students with the course material and involve delivering feedback for their efforts. Using a mixed 2 x 2 factorial experiment, we compared the effects of multiple choice answer formats (word versus letter) and methods (automated versus manual) on 70 undergraduate students' acquisition…

First Generation undergraduate students from low-income households (FGLI students) continue to have substantially higher dropout rates than non first generation students or students from more affluent households despite numerous efforts over many decades to improve graduation rates among this group of students. The purpose of this research is to…