Online and Distance Education Commons^™

Motivation And Learning Of Non-Traditional Computing Education Students In A Web-Based Combined Laboratory, Michael Jesse Green

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Hands-on experiential learning activities are an important component of computing education disciplines. Laboratory environments provide learner access to real world equipment for completing experiments. Local campus facilities are commonly used to host laboratory classes. While campus facilities afford hands-on experience with real equipment high maintenance costs, restricted access, and limited flexibility diminish laboratory effectiveness. Web-based simulation and remote laboratory formats have emerged as low cost options, which allow open access and learner control. Simulation lacks fidelity and remote laboratories are considered too complex for novice learners.

A web-based combined laboratory format incorporates the benefits of each format while mitigating the …

International Perspectives In Lis Education: Global Education, Research, And Collaboration At The Sjsu School Of Information, Sandra Hirsh, Michelle Simmons, Paul Christensen, Melanie Sellar, Cheryl Stenstrom, Christine Hagar, Anthony Bernier, Debbie Faires, Jane Fisher, Susan Alman

Faculty Publications

The IFLA Trend Report identified five trends that will impact the information environment (IFLA, 2015), such as access to information with new technologies, online education for global learning, hyper-connected communities, and the global information environment. The faculty at San José State University (SJSU) School of Information (iSchool) is engaged in a wide range of activities that focus on these trends—benefiting students, enhancing faculty professional development, and extending the school’s impact on the global information environment. The importance of incorporating global perspectives in the curriculum to reflect changes in the way that communities around the world access and share information is …

Teachers' Use Of Wikipedia With Their Students, Hagit Meishar-Tal

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

One of the most impressive phenomena in the creation and dissemination of human knowledge in recent years is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia written collaboratively by Web users. Nevertheless, teachers tend to oppose the use of wikipedia by their students and question its reliability. This paper explore the perceptions of k-12 school teachers in Israel towards the quality of the information in wikipedia and the reasoning they hold for these perceptions. Findings show that most of the teachers perceive Wikipedia as an environment of middling to poor reliability, accuracy, and timeliness. Many teachers do not realize how authoritative information is when generated …

The Disconnect Between Policy And Research: Examining The Research Into Full-Time K-12 Online Learning, Michael K. Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

While there has been some improvement in what is known about supplemental K-12 online learning, there continues to be a lack of evidence to guide the practice of full-time K-12 online learning. This paper concludes that despite considerable enthusiasm for full-time virtual education in some quarters, there is little high quality research to support the practice or call for expanding this form of virtual schools.

Developing Moocs To Narrow The College Readiness Gap: Challenges And Recommendations For A Writing Course, Shoba Bandi-Rao, Christopher Devers

Publications and Research

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have demonstrated the potential to deliver quality and cost effective course materials to large numbers of students. Approximately 60% of first-year students at community colleges are underprepared for college-level coursework. One reason for low graduation rates is the lack of the overall college readiness. MOOCs offering "remedial" writing have the potential to better prepare high school graduates for college, thereby increasing their chances of completing a degree and reducing the cost of education for students, families, institutions, and taxpayers. However, MOOCs are typically more suitable for motivated and prepared students. Designing a MOOC on writing …

Talking Less But Saying More: Teaching Us History Online, Carolyn J. Lawes

History Faculty Publications

After years of teaching in person at a large public university in Virginia, I decided to move my undergraduate U.S. history courses for that school online. I did so for one reason: the online format allows me to off er a better history class.

Architechture: Rebuilding The Traditional University For The 21st Century, Sarah E. Shearer

CMC Senior Theses

This senior thesis is an examination of the major complexities and considerations encountered in developing an e-learning program. In light of the changing landscape of higher education resulting from technological advancement, combined with changing pedagogies and financial pressures, traditional institutions are under heightened scrutiny and most in need of innovation. Online learning as been proposed as a solution to many of these issues, but creating a successful program is no small feat. Furthermore, experimental research on specific course designs and delivery often fails upon real-world implementation. Looking through the lens of Design-Base-Implementation Research (DBIR), an emerging research model that seeks …

The State Of Mobile Learning Implementation In Government Cabinet-Level Agencies And Departments, Algernon B. Corbett

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

As mobile technologies have increasingly become a part of personal and work environments, mobile learning is emerging as a viable alternative for training and education needs. Faced with the need for innovative and cost-efficient ways for training government employees, agencies and departments are considering the use of mobile learning. The availability of a wide range of mobile technology provides many options. Other than the Department of Defense, little is known about implementing mobile learning in United States government cabinet level agencies and departments. A concurrent, mixed methods case study was used to examine how organizations decide to use, implement and …

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Accessibility Awareness Among Faculty In Online Learning Environments, Rachael Sessler Trinkowsky

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Although all organizations and institutions should consider accessibility when developing online content, inaccessibility is a recurring issue in recent literature pertaining to online learning environments (OLEs) and faculty accessibility awareness. The goal was to describe how online faculty gain knowledge regarding accessibility, to explore the lived experiences of online faculty who have worked with students who have disabilities, and to gain a better understanding of how faculty experience the process of accessibility implementation. The following research questions guided this study: How do faculty in OLEs experience encounters regarding accessibility for students who have print related disabilities? How do faculty in …

What's Old Is New Again, And What's The Value Of Open, Apostolos Koutropoulos

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

This is the editor's note for this special issue of Current Issues in Emerging eLearning, where the editor discusses Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as well as the value of openness in education.

Highjacking The Mooc: Reflections On Creating/Teaching An Art History Mooc, Parme Giuntini, Jean-Marie Venturini

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

This article reflects on the experience of creating and launching a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) at Otis College of Art and Design. The authors will discuss the development process from content, goals and production to curriculum design and pedagogy. Lessons learned and best practices will be shared as well as assessment of the MOOC’s success. Suggestions will be offered for faculty who are interested in adapting and adopting (hijacking) MOOCs in conjunction with credit courses in their own institutions, and addresses the very practical faculty concerns that MOOCs pose.

Students' Experiences With Different Course Delivery Modalities: On Campus, Online, And Satellite, Mark C. Rehfuss, Andrea Kirk-Jenkins, Tammi F. Dice

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

In an effort to adapt to the technological advances of this century, the training of human services professionals has grown from traditional classrooms and satellite programs to online education. Many human services programs are under pressure from their universities and students to expand into online education. This study examined 252 students’ experiences and perceptions of their Bachelors of Science program as it transitioned to offering courses online in addition to on campus and satellite sites. Students’ narrative responses reflected 4 themes: convenience, interactions, learning preference, and technology. These themes and their implications for educators and students are discussed.

Task Design Challenges: The Meta Task Of Building Plns For Foreign Language Acquisition, Pilar Munday, Jaya Kannan

Languages Faculty Publications

Our latest collaborative research has primarily focused on studying challenges for digital pedagogy in promoting active learning and learner autonomy. These action research projects have been anchored in foreign language contexts in higher education settings. Here is a summary of two projects from 2014-2015: 1) With the goal of enhancing teaching practices in foreign language classrooms, the research project analyzed the use of student created videos to promote active learning. Using a case study of concrete tasks integrating student created videos in strengthening Spanish Language Acquisition (SLA), we were able to a)identify key characteristics of active learning, b)present the challenges …

Course Shell For Introduction To Oer Class, Steven Ovadia

Open Educational Resources

This is the course shell for the fully online OER class used to train CUNY faculty in OER implementation. It includes five modules plus a final project. The modules are:

• Class introduction
• An Introduction to Open Education Resources
• Finding and Evaluating Open Education Resources
• Using Open Education Resources in Your Class
• Creating and Hosting Your Own Open Education Resources

Discussion prompts are included as a separate document.

The Brief & Expansive History (And Future) Of The Mooc: Why Two Divergent Models Share The Same Name, Rolin Moe

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Within popular media, the massive open online course (MOOC) is presented as a novel idea created by maverick professors and further developed with a goal to further democratize education on bases of quality and cost. The perception of this sequence of events as modular history has perpetuated a difficulty in developing MOOC-related research and critique within the fields of distance and online education. At the center of this struggle is the MOOC acronym: its initial development was in 2008, and its use today happens in opposition to the theoretical and pedagogical elements of the 2008 MOOC. This paper endeavors to …

The Dark Side Of The Mooc - A Critical Inquiry On Their Claims And Realities, Markus Deimann

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Building on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, this paper utilises critical discourse analysis to examine claims attached to MOOCs in New York Times articles published between 2012 and 2013. Discourse analysis is proposed as a valuable tool enabling the understanding of MOOCs as historically constituted and socially constructed “events” with hidden meanings masked by rhetoric slogans. Noting that language is not just the reflection of social and psychological life but rather constructs social realities, this work posits how both media and commercial MOOC providers have constructed an “education is broken” narrative which states (1) traditional universities are no …

Down The Rabbit Hole: An Initial Typology Of Issues Around The Development Of Moocs, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Panagiotis Zaharias

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

MOOCs have experienced an unprecedented explosion of publicity. This publicity indicates both optimism that they may be the panacea for whatever ails higher education, as well as caution and trepidation that this may in-fact be some sort of new fad in higher education. In this wave of optimism, and subsequent wave of pessimism, we believe that there is something good to examine about MOOCs and that they do hold potential for certain educational arenas. That said, we don’t want to blindly dive into the MOOC optimism camp. We have critically examined the literature, from both academic peer-reviewed and academic press …

Supportive Technologies For Group Discussion In Moocs, Carolyn P. Rosé, Pam Goldman, Jennifer Zoltners Sherer, Lauren Resnick

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

A key hurdle that prevents MOOCs from reaching their transformative potential in terms of making valuable learning experiences available to the masses is providing support for students to make use of the resources they can provide for each other. This paper lays the foundation for meeting this challenge by beginning with a case study and computational modeling of social interaction data. The analysis yields new knowledge that informs design and development of novel, real-time support for building healthy learning communities that foster a high level of engagement and learning. We conclude by suggesting specific areas for potential impact of new …

Virtual Instructor-Student Interaction: A New Method For Stimulating Class Participation In An Asynchronous Learning Network, Christopher Donoghue

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

The goal of this paper is to describe a new virtual form of instructor-student interaction that can enable students to interact with their instructors without the pressures inherent in a traditional setting where they must face other students. Virtual instructor-student interaction (VISI) is a new pedagogical technique, developed by the author, which involves the transformation of an online survey into a medium that can simultaneously present course material, ask questions, obtain feedback and deliver responses. The interaction takes place asynchronously in a private space between the student and the instructor. By using this method instructors can enable students to grow …

Issues Of Online Distance Education: Learning Motivation Of Current And Prospective School Teachers, Anna Toom

Graduate School of Education Publications and Research

In this work, LM in three categories of students – motivated, unmotivated and overmotivated – was explored. Fifty graduate students, which were current and prospective school teachers and took the author’s online psychology courses in 2012-2013, participated in the study. The research methodology included developing the rules of coding students’ course work, designing the 100-scale of LM for representing their individual as well as collective data, and collecting info about students’ academic achievement in this course. According to the results, students’ LM has two co-existing components – pragmatic (grade-oriented) and cognitive (knowledge-oriented). Three mentioned categories of students differ in quantity …