Higher education has provided students with distance learning opportunities for over 150 years. This chapter traces the evolution of distance learning and provides an overview of some of the challenges inherent in learning in an online environment.

High schools have traditionally focused on the in-depth instruction of specific subject matter and have served as both a preparatory phase for higher education for some students and an institution that prepares others to enter the workforce. One method to help high schools accomplish these goals is through the creation and maintenance of a school…

Student achievement in web-based learning tools is assessed by using in-class examination, pretests, and posttests. The study reveals that using mastering chemistry web software in large-scale instruction provides an overall benefit to introductory chemistry students.

Two equally powerful forces are helping shape the future of business education. First is the growing requirement for competent business managers on a worldwide basis. Second are the changing demands on our academic libraries as a result of the ongoing digital revolution. These dynamics call for new and innovative education systems such as…

Sixty years ago, distance education probably involved a pen, paper, and secretarial classes conducted via snail mail. Today, students in ever-increasing numbers are more likely to link to the Internet to learn how to conjugate French verbs or dissect frogs in Advanced Placement courses, according to a new landmark study from the U. S. Department…

There has been a rapid proliferation of online courses and shareable content objects. These courses often include a vast array of information, yet they are not instructionally sound. The primary purpose of this article is to provide a procedure (tool) that will help instructional designers determine if existing e-learning courses and sharable…

This article proposes a framework that can help institutions break down and analyze the costs of online learning so they can make decisions about how to improve the cost-efficiencies of online education. The framework involves looking at costs across elements (which include the two stages of development and delivery plus administration of the…

In this paper, a Web-based learning environment developed within the project called Virtual Learning Spaces (EVA, in Spanish) is described. The environment is composed of knowledge, collaboration, consulting and experimentation spaces as a collection of agents and conventional software components working over the knowledge domains. All user…

To overcome weakness and faults of a web-based e-learning course such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), an immune agent was proposed, simulating a natural immune mechanism against a virus. The immune agent was built on the multi-dimension education agent model and immune algorithm. The web-based AI course was comprised of many files, such as HTML…

This study aims to investigate the relationships among personality traits and learners' academic achievement in a web based environment and attitudes towards web based education. 127 students enrolled in the e-MBA Masters Degree of Bilgi University constituted the study group of the research. A survey method was used for the study and the data…

E-learning is significant breakthrough in teaching and learning. Internet or web technologies are important because they facilitate and enhance communications among instructors and learners and provide tools to encourage creativity and initiative. If internet-based learning environments are to benefit students, then it is important from the…

A wide range of tools is now available to enable teaching practitioners to create web-based educational materials from PowerPoint presentations, adding a variety of different digital media, such as audio and animation. The pilot study described in this paper compared three different systems for producing multimedia presentations from existing…

As schools are increasingly encouraging students to use the Internet and web-based technology at home and in the classroom, concerns among some parents have increased. Today's parents have learned about computers as adults and did not receive guided participation as children either from their parents or from their teachers. The essence of this…

Although many benefits of case-based instruction with multimedia have been reported, there are few empirical studies of how the benefits of multimedia case-based instructions (MCBIs) are mediated by students' individual differences, such as their learning styles. Understanding the relationships between students' learning styles and the learning…

Web-based lecture technologies (WBLT) have gained popularity amongst universities in Australia as a tool for delivering lecture recordings to students in close to real time. This paper reports on a selection of results from a larger research project investigating the impact of WBLT on teaching and learning. Results show that while staff see the…