Pathways healthy and physically functional centenarians take to achieve advanced old age have fascinated mankind for centuries. This hermeneutic phenomenological study documents characteristics perceived by centenarians as important and central to their attainment of advanced longevity. Secondary data including written transcripts and audio and…

Older adults, students, professionals, and the general public increasingly turn to the Internet and to Wikipedia for information. Wikipedia, the world's sixth most used website, is by far the most widely used open-source information site. Among its nearly four million English-language encyclopedia articles, how thorough is coverage of key…

The Internet has increasingly influenced the information-seeking behavior of students in higher education over the past few decades. The mass availability of information on the web has seen significant changes in the electronic information needs, information retrieval, and communication patterns (information seeking behavior) of university…

Next-generation sequencing technologies have greatly reduced the cost of sequencing genomes. With the current sequencing technology, a genome is broken into fragments and sequenced, producing millions of "reads." A computer algorithm pieces these reads together in the genome assembly process. PHAST is a set of online modules…

This paper discusses a small, exploratory study introducing students to case management using role-plays conducted in a virtual world. Data from pre- and posttest questionnaires (to assess self-efficacy regarding a range of case management tasks) suggest students felt more confident in their abilities after virtual role-play participation. Also…

To a large extent education can be thought of as a communication process among the participants. This article focuses on distance education, which has both the general communication processes that in-person education venues possess, and also communication specific to the technologies that mediate the teaching and learning taking place at a…

Purpose: The current Internet Outlook of the OECD states that e-learning has the potential to revolutionise education and learning--if complemented by suitable didactic approaches. Therefore, the situation of e-learning is analysed from a student's perspective with focus on a new master program in Global Studies. The purpose of this paper is to…

Purpose: The purpose of this publication is to present a didactic concept with the targeted impact of a positive future vision. This paper reflects the effect of local educational action on the development of regionally optimised visions in rural regions of a European industrial state, compared with a rural region in the developing country of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how researchers from four large Canadian distance education or dual mode institutions conducted a survey aiming to describe the use of and interest in social software and Web 2.0 applications by distance education students and to measure their interest in collaborating with peers.…

Since soil plays a crucial role in all aspects of global environmental change, it is essential that post-secondary institutions provide students with a strong foundation in soil science concepts including soil classification. The onset of information technology (IT) and web-based multimedia have opened new avenues to better incorporate…

Federated searching was once touted as the library world's answer to Google, but ten years since federated searching technology's inception, how does it actually compare? This study focuses on undergraduate student preferences and perceptions when doing research using both Google and a federated search tool. Students were asked about their…

Among the most important of the tremendous changes that have been taken place in teaching and learning throughout recent years has been a move towards 'openness' in education. This includes an increased availability of alternatively licensed resources as well as extended possibilities for formal and quasi-formal learning in the context…

What is "open" about Open Educational Resources? How does education become "open" when it is removed from the institutional housing of the school or the university and develops in public social settings? Has the Internet, in providing educational content without cost and free of copyright restrictions, provoked a unique and…

Online learning is a descendant of distance education. Online education has a shared history with correspondence learning. In 1873, Anna Eliot Ticknor founded the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. Ticknor's Society established one of America's first correspondence schools, a distance learning option conducted through the mail. This Society was…

This paper intends to problematise understandings of the ethnographer's presence in investigating contemporary forms of technologised learning. The ubiquity of new educational technologies raises questions concerning the spaces of education and learning, and challenges, at the same time, the sense of "being there" in terms of the face-to-face…