Developing online learning communities is a promising pedagogical approach in online learning contexts for adult tertiary learners, but it is no easy task. Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting learning involves a complex set of issues that have a bearing on the design and facilitation of…

Recent research that assessed spatial judgments about multisensory stimuli suggests that humans integrate multisensory inputs in a statistically optimal manner by weighting each input by its normalized reciprocal variance. Is integration similarly optimal when humans judge the temporal properties of bimodal stimuli? Twenty-four participants…

In recent years, social networking services (SNSs), for example, Facebook, have shown exponential growth in their number of users. Witnessing the popularity of these SNSs, educational researchers have also explored the potential educational value of using SNSs. Despite the few studies that have investigated learners' attitudes toward and the…

Despite its potential, online dialogue (online dialogue) can be superficial. Following Vygotskian (1978) and design experiment approaches (Brown, 1992), this study explores a labelling feature that allows students to tag parts of their messages. Data comes from 4 sessions of a graduate education course. Students engaged in 2-3 graded online…

Educators know that to engage learners in the enterprise of critical thinking, learner's need to care enough to pay attention, and feel safe enough to take intellectual risks. When interacting asynchronously in online forums, it can become even more challenging to create a space that encourages reflective, integrative, and higher order thinking.…

Threaded discussions represent conversational turn-taking in asynchronous, online learning environments. Given the crucial role that discussions play in the construction of knowledge within an online course, the quality of the interaction that occurs within threaded discussions is important to achieving the learning objectives of the designed…

In this article I report the findings of a descriptive and interpretative qualitative study carried out in a public school in Bogotá, Colombia. The study aimed at analyzing, describing and exploring teenage students' social identity representation as observed in their participation in a learning community on Facebook. Data were collected from…

Research into teaching practices and strategies has been performed separately in AP Statistics and in K-12 online learning (Garfield, 2002; Ferdig, DiPietro, Black & Dawson, 2009). This study seeks combine the two and build on the need for more investigation into online teaching and learning in specific content (Ferdig et al, 2009; DiPietro,…

The current study investigates the effects of preparing students for an online debate through a worked example in terms of student perception, participation, and level of cognitive skills. The study found that students prepared for online debate through a worked example participated more frequently, wrote more words or phrases that encouraged the…

Online learning has become a reality for many students in higher education. Unfortunately, something that has also become a reality is a sense of isolation in online courses, and Moore (1980) has warned that students' sense of distance can threaten their ability to learn. The community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) has…

Facilitating students' critical thinking in asynchronous discussions is important in online learning environments. Since students need to be self-regulated in online learning, the instructors are expected to scaffold students by providing structure and guidance. This paper discusses critical inquiry in two groups of students' online discussions.…

Leveraging the knowledge of an organization is an ongoing challenge that has given rise to the field of knowledge management. Yet, despite spending enormous sums of organizational resources on Information Technology (IT) systems, executives recognize there is much more knowledge to harvest. Prediction markets are emerging as one tool to help…

This article describes the adaptation and validation of the "Distance Education Learning Environments Survey" (DELES) for use in investigating the qualities found in distance and hybrid education psycho-social learning environments in Spain. As Europe moves toward post-secondary student mobility, equanimity in access to higher education,…

Skype, Edmodo, iApps, and Shutterfly may sound like fantasy characters or mythical creatures from some futuristic novel. But the students at Paine Primary School in Trussville, Alabama, will gladly explain that these odd-sounding names belong to the Web 2.0 applications in which they are fast becoming fluent. For these kids--and those at other…

We present a case study to evaluate the use of a Wimba Voice Board to support asynchronous audio discussion. We discuss the learning strategy and pedagogic rationale when a Voice Board was implemented within an MA module for language learners, enabling students to create learning objects and facilitating peer-to-peer learning. Previously students…