Education Commons^™

Online Learning Environments: What Early Childhood Teacher Education Students Say, Ann Heirdsfield, Julie Davis, Sandra Lennox, Sue Walker, Weihong Zhang

Sandra Lennox

As online environments gain an increasing presence in higher education for both on-campus students and distance learners, there is a need to examine how effective these environments are for student learning. Online environments require essentially different teaching and learning strategies from those used in the traditional face-to-face contexts (for on-campus students) or with print-based material (for distance learners). This article identifies early childhood teacher education students' perceptions of their learning experiences with the advent of an online learning environment. Perceptions of on-campus and distance learners are compared, and implications for teacher education staff interested in providing high quality learning environments …

Understanding First Year University Students: Personal Epistemology And Learning, Sue Walker, Joanne Brownlee, Sandra Lennox, Beryl Exley, Kerry Howells, Fiona Cocker

Sandra Lennox

Whilst participation in higher education has increased dramatically over the last two decades, many universities are only now beginning to pay more attention to the learning experiences of first year students. It is important for universities to understand how first year students conceive of learning and knowing in order to promote effective approaches to learning. Even though an extensive body of research demonstrates that beliefs about learning and knowing influence student approaches to learning and learning outcomes, there has been no Australian research that has investigated this critical learner characteristic across first year university students.

This paper reports on preliminary …