Lab-centric instruction emphasizes supervised, hands-on activities by substituting lab for lecture time. It combines a multitude of pedagogical techniques into the format of an extended, structured closed lab. We discuss the range of benefits for students, including increased staff interaction, frequent and varied self-assessments, integrated…

What are the most effective and efficient ways to teach business cases online, specifically in asynchronous electronic discussion boards? This article describes several design strategies and approaches used by instructors at Babson College to structure and facilitate online case discussions in our blended Fast Track MBA program. (Contains 3 notes,…

This study presents the results of a survey implemented to investigate Turkish university students' technology use profile and their thoughts about distance education. The sample of the study is 6504 students from four universities in Turkey. The results of the study are reported in five main sections: 1) demographic information of the students,…

This study is based on the analysis of academic results of 692 undergraduate and graduate students in two disciplines in a French university who attended their courses using one out of four possible learning modalities. Within the two disciplines, Art History and Educational Sciences, students chose between face-to-face learning (on campus),…

Online instruction in general and blended instruction in particular have gained a sizable and permanent foothold in postsecondary educational environments. In addition, student diversity has become the norm. Universal design for instruction is a framework that consists of nine principles for instructional design and delivery; it proposes that…

This paper explores the concept and practice of "embodied pedagogy" as an alternative to the Cartesian approach to knowledge that is tacitly embedded in traditional modes of teaching and learning about religion. My analysis highlights a class I co-teach that combines the study of Aikido (a Japanese martial art) with seminar-style discussions of…

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT), especially the recent explosive growth of Internet capacities, offers tremendous educational opportunities. The future growth and development of e-learning technologies is, perhaps, the most important of these trends in the realm of education. In fact, e-learning in…

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has become a prominent model of teaching and learning in online and blended learning environments. Considerable research has been conducted which employs the framework with promising results, resulting in wide use to inform the practice of online and blended teaching and learning. For the CoI model to…

This one-year case study examined hybrid learning in two elementary teacher education courses, which incorporated the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) into the online portion of the coursework. Fifty-one elementary teacher candidates who were enrolled in two hybrid courses participated in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative…

The UK Government's recent funding cuts in higher education, coupled with the importance of maintaining competitiveness at a global and national level--a competitiveness that has worsened lately due to a gloomy recession--have placed even more pressure on UK academic institutions to adopt innovative curricula and, most importantly, to increasingly…

Various formats of online discussion have proven valuable for enhancing learning and collaboration in distance and blended learning contexts. However, despite their capacity to reveal essential processes in collaborative inquiry, current mainstream analytical frameworks, such as the cognitive presence framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer,…

An action research study was conducted at a campus college of a large Research I institution of higher education to explore transformative learning among higher education faculty as a result of participating in a blended program to prepare them to teach online. The purposeful sample included six full-time and one adjunct faculty, teaching a mix of…

Students in the vocational schools in Taiwan largely care little about their grades and do not get involved adequately in their schoolwork. To respond effectively to this challenge of teaching, two cases were studied and compared; one is a class using a traditional method of teaching and the other a class deploying innovative teaching methods of…

This paper examines a core leadership strategy for transforming learning and teaching in distance education through flexible and blended learning. It focuses on a project centred on distributive leadership that involves collaboration, shared purpose, responsibility and recognition of leadership irrespective of role or position within an…

A hybrid course of Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory which combines traditional face-to-face instruction with an online web enhanced learning environment within a Course Management System was designed, developed, and implemented with a purpose to establish an active and student-centred educational setting. Multi-representational educational…