The Irish inter-institutional virtual learning environments (VLEs) open dataset stems from ongoing work with a rolling longitudinal survey of students' usage of VLEs which has been ongoing in 12 higher education institutions since 2008. The project has collected over 21,000 student responses to date through the growth of an extended network of…

A process for analyzing log files collected from open-ended learning environments is developed and tested on a virtual lab problem involving reaction stoichiometry. The process utilizes a set of visualization tools that, by grouping student actions in a hierarchical manner, helps experts make sense of the linear list of student actions recorded in…

The pressures of the information and digital culture exhibit innovation, but also a hegemonic power, and act in reciprocity with the global economy. Theoretical concepts and practical actions need to be revisited, to build equity in virtual communication. A sociological-cultural focus of communication mediated by technology, cannot occur without…

Social work programs increasingly are engaged in deploying distance education models, yet questions remain about how to teach direct practice skills within this context. As field agency changes have limited practice opportunities for social work students, methods for helping interns develop direct practice skills in diverse field practicum…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the challenge of designing an interface for a virtual class, where being represented together contributes to the learning process. It explores the possibility of virtual empathy. Design/methodology/approach: The challenges are: How can this feeling of empathy be recreated through a delicate staging…

The area of online K-12 education is experiencing rapid growth, yet practice has greatly surpassed the research. This article looks to add to the field by examining special education students enrolled in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. There were over 2600 students in the state that were identified as special education students and enrolled in…

Students are doing less hand-raising and more clicking as online classes become increasingly popular in K12 instruction, both in combination with brick-and-mortar classrooms and in independent full-time virtual schools. With online instruction comes a change in the nature of teaching, communicating with, and assessing students. As schools move to…

This chapter discusses the need for preparing all education professionals, including teachers, school psychologists, school counselors, administrators, school media specialists, and education technologists for virtual schools and other K-12 online learning programs. It provides some base information about what preparatory programs can do to help…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create a synchronous online learning community through the use of "Blackboard Collaborate!" to promote and enhance transactional engagement outside the classroom. Design/methodology/approach: This paper employs a quantitative and qualitative approach where data were sourced from a third year…

Virtual Labs (VLAB) is a multi-institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative, exclusively focused on lab experiments for engineering education. This project envisages building a large OER repository, containing over 1650 virtual experiments mapped to the engineering curriculum. The introduction of VLAB is a paradigm shift in an…

This study uses theory-based design principles to evaluate the effectiveness of an instructional simulation, simSchool. It begins by examining the simulation and evaluation literature, followed by an evaluation of the simSchool software. It is a Web-based simulation designed to emulate various students (reactions) in order to provide practice for…

Online charter schools are unique among K-12 online learning options for students. They are full-time, public schools that combine online learning with traditional and home schooling practices. They are often chartered by a state agency, supported in full or in part with state funds and most often managed by a private educational management…

Most physics professors would agree that the lab experiences students have in introductory physics are central to the learning of the concepts in the course. It is also true that these physics labs require time and money for upkeep, not to mention the hours spent setting up and taking down labs. Virtual physics lab experiences can provide an…

For students of any academic background or vocational preference, introductory psychology is also one of the most popular social science courses. For many students in the community college setting, the introductory psychology course may be the only formal exposure to non-pseudoscience theory a student will receive. The Virginia Community College…

After a decade of virtual learning environments (VLEs) in higher education, many teachers still use only a minimum of its affordances. This study looked at how academic staff interacted with a new and unknown VLE in order to understand how technology acceptance and support materials influence (perceived and actual) task performance. In an…