The rise of competency-based education (CBE) has redefined what college looks like for a growing number of students. The basic idea underlying CBE is simple: programs award credit based on demonstrated student competencies rather than on the amount of time a student has spent in a given course. Recent advances in technology, including online…

This article presents an interview with Paul Avon, the former executive director of the Canadian Virtual College Consortium. Avon has spent over fifteen years in the distance learning (DL) field managing the production and delivery of online learning at TVOntario, Humber College, the Sri Lankan National Online Distance Education Service, and the…

In an increasingly competitive world, many universities have tried to improve academic performance, retention and graduation rates by introducing online education or mentoring. Although researchers have explored university mentoring using qualitative methods, few have addressed the quantitative connection between student mentoring and academic…

With the growing demand for e-learning along with striving for excellence associated with globalization, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role…

This study examines faculty perceptions of creating learning communities at a virtual university. Through online focus groups with 18 participants, 3 themes emerged: institutional-level community building as creating a learning culture; instructor-level community building as creating respectful interaction; and learner-level community building as…

This article examines an innovation in teaching-learning and assessment processes through the use of a platform called the Competency Assessment Tool (CAT). It allows for the tracking of student blogs with the objective of improving self-reflective processes and providing feedback. The experiment was carried out in six universities in Catalonia,…

The constructivist form of learning creates such an environment where the learners are not only active but they become actors' i.e members and contributors of the social and information space without taking into consideration the geographic boundaries. Such an innovative form of distance education was initiated in India in the year 2007 and it was…

The use of the Internet in higher education teaching can facilitate the interactive learning process and thus improve educational outcomes. The aim of the study presented here is to explore which variables are linked to higher intensity of Internet-based interactive educational practices. The study is based on data obtained from an online survey…

Two trends currently impacting higher education intersect in this study: (1) students with learning disabilities are enrolling in colleges and universities in increasing numbers, and (2) colleges and universities are increasingly relying on the web to provide services to students. This reliance on the "virtual campus" comes without…

The advantages of mobile technologies have not been lost on higher education institutions, and they have tried to provide educational services through the use of mobile learning management system (LMS). However, offering such services does not necessarily mean that the students will adopt the new technology. Thus, the purpose of this study was to…

Current trends in postsecondary education include a heavy emphasis and use of online learning opportunities. Many universities are challenged to find enough qualified faculty to meet the growing needs related to online education, as they are not able to move their core faculty into dedicated online teaching roles. The problem of filling teaching…

The present study is aimed at examining instructional paradigms of virtual education in Pakistan. The population of the study consisted of learners from Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program at Virtual University (VU) of Pakistan. The researcher adopted convenient sampling technique and collected data from 600 learners through five-point…

As free online courses draw students to star professors at prestigious colleges, Peer 2 Peer University asks whether instructors are needed at all. This article features Peer 2 Peer University, a three-year-old online institution where students learn together, at no charge, using materials found on the Web. The unusual institution, where anyone…

The ongoing social changes taking place on a global scale have made universities respond to these new challenges by offering new study programmes, implementing modifications of study plans, taking up new research focus as well as by broadening the offer of adult education. These changes necessarily require modifications in terms of the structure…

The world is currently going through a transitional period, moving from the Service era to the Information era. Rapid societal and technological innovations are changing the way we live, communicate, and work. As the rate of the technological/societal change increases, pressure on educational institutions also increases. This pressure is…