Participation in "communities of practice" is often depicted as a central feature of various theoretical understandings of the social nature of learning. How are such communities of practice to be enacted in distance education, which, by definition, implies spatial detachment? This article reflects on the dimensions of communities of…

This article is a theoretical study of the self-presentation strategies employed by higher education students online; it examines student identity work via profile information and avatars in a blended learning environment delivered through social networking sites and virtual worlds. It argues that students are faced with difficult choices when…

This is a review of the literature surrounding five popular media-rich educational online technologies (EOTs) currently being used by educationalists to support blended learning within tertiary environments. This review considers the following EOTs: 1) connective media, 2) interactive gaming, 3) virtual worlds, 4) web conferencing and 5) learning…

Internet-enabled mobile devices have increased the accessibility of learning content for students. Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile computing technology, a thorough understanding of the acceptance factors that impact a learner's intention to use mobile technology as an augment to their studies is warranted. Student acceptance of mobile…

In the biological sciences, higher student success levels are achieved in traditionally formatted, face-to-face coursework than in hybrid courses. The methodologies used to combine hybrid and in-person elements to the course need to be applied to the biological sciences to emulate the success seen in the traditional courses since the number of…

This article reports a theory-driven experimental study that evaluates the effects of an annotation functionality on online social interaction and individual learning outcomes. The central hypothesis of this study is that directly addressing a part of a text by annotating it and then connecting each annotation with its related discussion can…

In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In "Getting Smart," well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite…

The demand for broadly educated engineers, installers and service technicians is growing because of the strong growth in refrigeration, air conditioning and heating. The rapid technological evolution makes it impossible for a school or training centre to invest in all HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning) and refrigeration fields. It is…

There is a dearth of research into teaching strategies and learning approaches for units involving sensitive topics that can provoke an emotional response in students. In a business ethics unit, attempts to strike a balance between conceptual knowledge and theory and skills training can be challenging because the unit can involve personal,…

Flipping the classroom refers to moving lectures outside of the classroom to incorporate other activities into a class during its standard meeting time. This pedagogical modality has recently gained traction as a way to center the learning on students in mathematics classrooms. In an effort to better understand the efficacy of this approach, we…

DSGN110 was a multidisciplinary course teaching first year students enrolled in in a variety of majors about design thinking. The course is offered for the majors of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, community and regional planning, along with computer science and business students. By blending face-to-face and online…

This research paper explores the effectiveness of using mobile technologies to support a blended learning course titled Scientific Research Methods in Information Science. Specifically, it discusses the effects of WhatsApp mobile learning activities guided by activity theory on students' knowledge Management (KM). During the 2014 academic year,…

Generally it is not easy for an instructor to prepare and deliver electronic courses via e-learning. Therefore it is necessary to work and develop an easy system. In this context module technology was used to for provide modularity in conducting educational development of e-learning course. Then, rapid e-learning was used for more quick and easy…

Reports of flipped classrooms across areas in the field of ESL are rare, and those that address the complexities of ESL teacher education, particularly the methods course in which procedural knowledge is privileged over declarative knowledge, are even rarer. This paper uses a design-­-based research (DBR) approach to explore the flip of an ESL…

The flipped classroom is a flexible blended learning model that is growing in popularity due to the emergent accessibility to online content delivery technology. By delivering content outside of class time asynchronously, teachers are able to dedicate their face to face class time for student-centred teaching approaches. The flexibility in…