Technology, if integrated effectively, has been found to influence students' academic performance, develop their higher order thinking and problem solving, improve their motivation, attitude, and interest in learning, and help them prepare for the workforce as well as address the needs of low performing, at-risk, and learning impaired students…

Purpose: Applications of online Second Life (SL) prevail over the world. The purpose of this paper is to make a review and synthesis of recent research studies on SL. Design/methodology/approach: Documental analysis is employed. Totally, 135 research publications, published in 2006-2008, are reviewed and synthesized. Findings: Findings are as…

This case study offers a strategic model of methods and services resulting in relatively high student success rates as defined by course completion of introductory first and second semester online courses. This strategic model is presented in the context of Sloan-C's "Five Pillars of Quality Online Education."

In the U.S., only 38 of every 100 ninth graders enroll in college; of these 38, only 18 complete bachelors' degrees within six years. Asynchronous learning networks (ALN)--asynchronous, highly interactive, instructor-led, resource-rich, cohort-based learning--can yield high success rates. Growing demand for online education and the expectation…

Using mobile games in education combines situated and active learning with fun in a potentially excellent manner. The effects of a mobile city game called Frequency 1550, which was developed by The Waag Society to help pupils in their first year of secondary education playfully acquire historical knowledge of medieval Amsterdam, were investigated…

The present study aims to determine the impact of blended learning model on student attitudes towards Geography course and their critical thinking dispositions and skills. An experimental pattern with pretest-posttest control group was used in the study. The study group consists of a total of 57 students--28 in the experiment group and 29 in the…

Online dialogic communities have become a ubiquitous tool that transforms student learning and course delivery. Threaded Discussions extend classroom learning by providing an asynchronous method of communication for the exchange of meaningful ideas that promote critical thinking and develop thoughtful reflective learning. Threaded Discussions…

This paper describes a unique graduate-level course that prepares teachers of introductory statistics at the college and high school levels. The course was developed as part of a graduate degree program in statistics education. Although originally taught in a face-to-face setting, the class has been converted to an online course to be accessible…

Using data collected from 120 students enrolled in nine sections of an undergraduate technical communication course, this study found a number of statistically significant associations between students' learning styles, as defined by the Index of Learning Styles, and nine measures evaluating both academic performance and student preference. The…

This study explores how students' learning styles influence their learning while solving complex problems when a case-based e-learning environment is implemented in a conventional lecture-oriented classroom. Seventy students from an anaesthesiology class at a dental school participated in this study over a 3-week period. Five learning-outcome…

Research has established that intrinsic motivation has a positive effect on learning and academic achievement. In order to investigate the phenomenon of intrinsic motivation in technology-supported learning environments, this paper investigates the factors deemed to support individual student intrinsic motivation in online discussions. A research…

In all educational contexts, technological developments and changes in pedagogical theory mean that any picture of current practice and attitudes must be dynamic. In many countries, the learning outcomes of foreign language courses now include intercultural communicative competence (ICC), although the precise model for teaching ICC varies even…

High school students can access original scientific research articles on the Internet, but may have trouble understanding them. To address this problem of online literacy, the authors developed a computer-based prototype for guiding students' comprehension of scientific articles. High school students were asked to read an original scientific…

Variations in group co-construction of knowledge and the extent to which participants engaged in negotiating meaning were directly related to instruction. The authors examined social interaction resulting from controlled variation in instruction using a counter-balanced design in two professional development courses for teachers. Both courses were…

The establishment of an online community is widely held as the most important prerequisite for successful course completion and depends on an interaction between a peer group and a facilitator. Beaudoin reasoned that online students sometimes engage and learn even when not taking part in online discussions. The context of this study was an online…