Increasingly, colleges and universities are offering online courses using commercial course packaging. One of the most popular courseware programs is Blackboard. This article describes research that employed a two-pronged approach to investigate how education faculty used Blackboard courseware to facilitate student competence in using technology.…

Online education is not for everyone. Although it is becoming increasingly popular, online education has both benefits and limitations. It is certainly convenient, and it allows some people access to education who otherwise might be prevented from involvement. But its impersonal nature and the many resources needed to deliver quality online…

Given the extraordinary interest and growth in eLearning as a learning tool and as an industry, it is not surprising there is lively debate on quality. A research-based and tested eLearning model was used to design and evaluate an online M.Ed. course in order to study factors that influence the quality of an eLearning event. Several data…

Typically, most research and academic institutions own and archive a great amount of objects and research related resources that have been produced, used and maintained over long periods of time by different types of "domain experts" (e.g. lecturers and researchers). Although the potential educational value of these resources is very…

Most colleges and universities have adopted course management systems (e.g., Blackboard, WebCT). Worldwide faculty and students use them for class communications and discussions. The discussion tools provided by course management systems, while powerful, often do not offer adequate capabilities to appraise communication patterns, online behaviors,…

Web-based teaching and learning cannot be easily characterized. In Web-based teaching and learning, technology features are combined in a theoretically unlimited number of ways to support a multitude of requirements and preferences. We need to better understand different approaches, activities, goals and perspectives, and approaches likely to…

The purpose of this study was to examine academic department chair perceptions about the future influence of web-based distance education on departmental operations and their changing role as academic leader. Using a rating, modified-policy Delphi method, the researcher worked with 22 department chairs employed at public, urban universities in the…

A small rural school in Idaho tried various forms of distance education to broaden the range of subjects offered to students. It gave up on satellite-based coursework because of high cost and synchronization problems. Correspondence courses solved the synchronization problem, but still required expensive adult supervision to keep students on task.…

Biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of life in this planet. In order to be fully appreciated, biodiversity needs to be experienced firsthand, or "experientially." Thus, the standard classroom lecture format is not the ideal situation for teaching biodiversity and evolutionary concepts, in that student interest and understanding are…

The use of the Internet to deliver courses at tertiary level is growing steadily, with the Internet being seen as the ideal solution to a range of issues facing educators in the 21st century. However, little is known as how best to use synchronous communication to support students' learning. This paper documents a New Zealand tertiary course…

Purpose: To study the performance of final year medical students, at the end of module assessments, following exposure to a web-based tutorial programme designed to facilitate critical thinking and logical reasoning. Method: Multimedia enhanced web-based tutorials based on patient oriented problems, designed to develop higher cognitive skills in…

Introductory biology courses for pre-professional majors at large universities are usually high-enrollment lectures with associated labs that complement the lecture, but are independently taught and administered. Although web-based instructional formats have become popular alternatives to traditional lectures, it is unknown how these formats…

This article describes the approaches taken by various school districts in teaching technology literacy to their students. One such example is the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, developed in partnership with The Franklin Institute, a science museum, which teaches a curriculum that stresses science, technology, mathematics, and…

This article reports the results of a 2-year study examining the effects of subject matter, course structure, and participant behaviors on students' perceived learning and satisfaction with delivery medium in Web-based courses of an MBA program in the midwestern United States. Using finance as the referent discipline, we found statistically…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which the experience of learning through an online problem-based learning (PBL) model affect teachers' perceptions of integrating technology. Participant reflections were collected and analyzed to identify the pros, cons, and challenges of learning technology integration through this…