Education Commons^™

Pioneers Of Asynchronous Online Education At Religion-Based Institutions Of Higher Education: A Multiple Case Study Exploring The Process Of Adoption Of Online Education At Three Private Catholic Colleges, Alan D. Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the process of adopting online education at three private colleges. All three institutions participating in the study were private Catholic colleges that offered their first online courses in the late 1990s. The research question posed for this study was: Within the participating institutions, how did online education get started and what was the process for its development?

Findings from this research indicated that, for an institution to successfully implement online education, four elements emerged: (a) some form of infrastructure needed to be in place that could support online education, (b) a latent force, referred to as …

Importance Of Developing Community In Distance Education Courses, Robert L. Moore

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The separation of student and instructor is the core characteristic of distance education (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 28), contributing to one of the biggest challenges to distance education—attrition (Dueber & Misanchuk, 2001, p. 2). By the very nature of distance education, students are different locations from one another and their instructor. The instructor’s challenge is figuring out how to make students feel connected and able to succeed in this new learning environment. The development of a sense of community is an effective and efficient way to help ensure the success of the distance education program and can directly address …