Research has identified that pre-service teachers have concerns about technology integration (e.g., their future school would lack technology resources; technology is not applicable in their subject areas). Mentoring has been highlighted as a means of overcoming these concerns. In this study, we present and investigate one strategy -- an…

Students learn best when they are active and engaged. Even when we combine asynchronous and synchronous communication, it is challenging to get the optimal levels of engagement and communication. A number of different ways of creating communication and interactivity have been tested out including mandatory on-campus seminars, small size groups of…

Instructor social presence involves instructors establishing their presence as "being there" in terms of frequency of communication and interaction with students as well as supporting students throughout the learning process (Lowenthal 2015). Instructor social presence can be constructed and maintained through the design and facilitation…

This study examined the impact of instructional support of fourth-grade students' basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) on their motivation to participate in asynchronous online discussions and their argumentation skills. An instructional intervention called Need Supportive Blended Learning (NSBL) was developed and tested…

It seems certain that blended learning will be on the rise in higher education, with in-person meetings increasingly precious time, and online synchronous and asynchronous sessions used to complement them. This paper examines Knowledge Building in two graduate courses conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no in-person sessions;…

COVID-19, the most severe global pandemic since the Spanish flu that followed World War I, threatens nearly every country, from global powers to developing nations. This threat presents a concurrent challenge for educational systems. With schools closed during the pandemic, students and teachers have had to stay at home worldwide. This shift has…

Consequent to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, pedagogic changes were introduced in postgraduate courses in Physiology, where face-to-face teaching was replaced with synchronous virtual mode for leader-centered (seminar, symposium) and participant-centered (journal club, group discussion) academic activities. We hypothesized that the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of our lives, including instruction in the higher education system. In this sudden and stressful change, faculty had to explore different opportunities and technologies to continue to deliver quality instruction to their students. Instructional design has always been an important topic for education…

The COVID-19 pandemic required educators and learners to shift to emergency remote instruction, often with little prior notice. To understand how teachers managed the transition, from April to September 2020 we surveyed nearly 1,500 instructors from 118 countries. Using cluster analysis, we have detected two readily distinguishable groups of…

One of the foundational principles of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) system is accessibility for students -- multi-tiered resources and strategies that ensure equitable and valid access for students to instructional and assessment content. This Guide includes 54 accessibility strategies that can be used by teachers,…

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced school buildings to close, online learning became a lifeline for K-12 education. It let schools carry on in "the cloud" when they could not meet in person. But online learning's potential benefits for K-12 go well beyond providing stop-gap solutions during school closures. It offers an opportunity to…

It is widely believed that digitally-driven changes are not welcomed amongst academic staff in higher education. However, when in March 2020, the University of Nottingham went online in response to the UK government's COVID-19 lockdown, a different picture started to emerge. This contribution reflects on the initial steps taken to respond to the…

The COVID-19 induced abrupt transition to online learning that occurred in the Spring of 2020 presented particular challenges to the adaptation of hands-on laboratory courses in biomedical engineering. This paper describes the transition of such a course in one undergraduate program, assessment of this transition, and how this assessment has led…

Youth with disabilities are overall less engaged in extracurricular, community, and social activities than their peers without disabilities. Specifically, youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD; e.g., autism, intellectual disability) are less likely to participate in extracurricular or social activities compared to peers with…

This book is the first edited volume to compile up-to-date scholarship that discusses frontier knowledge on second language (L2) collaborative writing (CW) and highlights technology-mediated solutions to it. The volume consists of conceptual papers and empirical studies that explore theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to CW in…