Flexibility and Pedagogy in Higher Education: Delivering Flexibility in Learning Through Online Learning Communities (2020) is a collection of essays exploring the application of pedagogical flexibility as it shapes online learning communities. Contributing authors explore flexibility in online learning as a conduit to promote social justice, develop learners’ online study skills, create online peer networks, nurture online learning communities, deliver academic support services, and build academic communities through social networks such as Twitter.
The study compares the effectiveness, popularity, and ease of applicability of different learning tools in virtual classrooms among university teachers and students regarding the users’ technological literacy and training, as well as equipment support offered by the universities during the pandemic. Comparisons between face-to-face teaching in classrooms and online virtual classrooms will be drawn with respect to limitations, incentives, motivation, and effectiveness toward learning. This study also leads to the question of future course development by exploring the possibility of course design and assessment restructuring with a switch to online education with the new mode of technology as the trend.
This article is drawn from a dissertation (Holt, 2020) that describes, based on the teaching presence component of the community of inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework, the lived experiences of mathematics instructors while establishing teaching presence in online higher education mathematics courses. Teaching presence is necessary for achieving learning outcomes and student satisfaction. This article describes how mathematics instructors establish teaching presence in online higher education mathematics courses. The participants for this study were faculty members from a public university system. Data were collected from face-to-face and online mathematics course syllabi and in-depth, semistructured interviews. The interview data were subjected to a phenomenological analysis, and the syllabi were subjected to content analysis.
This study aimed to investigate the graduate student’s perceptions of the effectiveness of academic coaches in asynchronous accelerated online instruction in a master’s educational leadership program. A mixed-method research design was used to examine student satisfaction using surveys and focus student group interviews on an accelerated online masters in the educational leadership program. The sample population for this study included participants from former and current graduate students in an educational leadership master of education program. The study is a step forward in understanding the role of instructional coaches and the support provided to students and professors in accelerated online programs. Results indicated that a sample of students believed that instructional coaches needed proper credentials, experience, and training to serve the students with whom they worked. In addition, both positive and negative experiences were both reported by the sample of graduate students. Over f53% of the students reported being extremely or somewhat satisfied with their academic coach. Many expressed those academic coaches were a supportive element in the courses they were assigned.
Montclair State University (MSU) is New Jersey’s second-largest public institution. As online education continues its rapid-paced growth, MBA programs have been some of the most common online degrees. In 2016, Montclair’s Feliciano School of Business entered this crowded online MBA market. After a false start and sometimes rocky development, the online MBA was successfully launched in the fall of 2016. The program grew so fast that the leadership team needed to find innovative ways to handle the number of students. The lessons learned by the online MBA leadership team are detailed below.
A central component of online learning, asynchronous discussions have the potential to positively impact distance learners in myriad ways. For discussion to be most impactful, best practices associated with online discussion should be implemented, yet discernment regarding such practices too often remains elusive or unimplemented. To address this need, research-based, high-impact approaches to facilitating meaningful discussions are explored here through 5 different strategies for deepening discussion in the online learning platform. Innovative guidance and support accompany each approach. Furthermore, each exploration into deepening discussion is meant to enhance student engagement and achievement to improve overall retention in online learning.
Online education led to the survival of many colleges and universities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. However, despite the subsequent recommendations of scholars to institutionalize distance education, many institutions found themselves ill-prepared for the shift to remote or online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. One university’s strategy of building distance education infrastructure and instructional design capacity for fully online master (template) courses allowed learning and teaching to proceed—without closure—throughout the pandemic. Faculty increasing their use of instructor video and synchronous sessions resulted in high student satisfaction—equivalent to that before COVID. Recommendations for asynchronous and synchronous instruction are provided
In the Republic of Korea, the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the start of the 2020 academic year and saw emergency remote teaching (ERT) emerge as a way of maintaining educational continuity for millions of students. While ERT was new and unplanned at the time, the practice became sustained over the semesters that followed, marking a shift from ERT to sustained remote teaching (SRT). Questions remain, however, whether students’ experiences and perceptions with learning remotely would improve as a result of institutional preparedness and faculty experience. Given this, we investigated exchange students’, a unique group of students who are historically interested in having place-based residential education, experiences, and perceptions with SRT while attending college in Korea. We administered a survey to 140 (spring 2020), 93 (fall 2020), 141 (spring 2021), and 143 (fall 2021) exchange students where they rated their perceptions of teaching and learning processes, student support, and course structure with their SRT learning experiences. Independent-samples one-way ANOVAs comparing perceptions between Semester 1 and 2, Semester 2 and 3, Semester 3 and 4, and Semester 1 and 4 indicated several statistically significant mean score increases, though the scope and degree of the changes are ultimately minor improvements and interpreted as insignificant. Implications for SRT policy and future research are discussed.
While distance education technology combines individual locations virtually, distance education communities are shaped by how participants share resources. Distance education communities are established over time through overlapping spheres of influence. Research is needed that considers how transnational families and students are either invited or discouraged from sharing their linguistic and cultural resources within distance education communities. This article describes the results of a 2-year qualitative study that examined distance education communities containing transnational multilingual elementary students and families. This article discusses factors that should be considered when supporting distance education programs.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education beyond what was previously imaginable. This study was conducted immediately at the completion of the 2020 school year and focused on the challenges southeast Minnesota teachers experienced while teaching in an online environment. The survey was completed by 218 K–12 teachers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges that teachers, in southeast Minnesota, experienced during the shift to distance learning and to investigate teacher preparedness in a distance learning environment. A literature review coupled with the survey results offer administrators and universities insight into the K–12 distance learning environments.
As online education continues to evolve and create new opportunities for educators to deliver quality instruction, universities are challenged with the range of learning management systems (LMSs) that can serve the educational needs of both universities and teachers. This quantitative study examined teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) or English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ perceptions about LMSs in online teaching. The study used survey design and Rogers’ (2003) theory of diffusion of innovation to measure the perceptions of teachers following relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, and complexity. The findings explained the factors influencing the adoption process.
Higher education in the United States faces an online retention crisis. Online enrollment is increasing, spurred on by the COVID-19 online shift, yet online students are failing and dropping out at rates far higher than face-to-face students. We present data from 2 empirical studies to demonstrate that faculty who establish rapport—or positive relationships and communication—with their students are more likely to retain them. Study 1 uses data from 35 online classes (n = 910) to demonstrate that rapport improves retention for all student populations. Study 2 is an experiment (n = 394), which shows even minimum exposure to rapport can improve student retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Quarterly Review of Distance Education is the property of Information Age Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
The results of a 3-year fieldwork study within France’s National Centre for Distance Education are presented, specifically detailing the impacts on higher education middle management overseeing curricula design for a series of French 3-year degree programs undergoing revision in how students are financially charged for the programs. Following the ethnographic research process model, an amalgam of the researcher’s prior knowl- edge of middle management and the sharing of that knowledge with educational workers are reported. Find- ings were as follows: (1) an ethnographic researcher’s preconceptions and knowledge should be carefully employed when conducting ethnographic studies; (2) possessing a strong base of prior knowledge of the field under study is an important aspect of the ethnographic research process; (3) emerging observed controversies and debates should not be extinguished with the researcher’s knowledge base so that these may be docu- mented and examined (knowledge, even when academically stabilized, undergoes constant adaptation. It is of utmost importance for the education ethnographer to be precise when previous knowledge is relevant to the setting, including the fundamental limits they present.).
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the digital divide and inequalities among learners and compelled the need to reimagine how teachers and educators teach and support student learning no matter where they live or to what tools they have access [ ]they have not been able to participate to the same degree as their more privileged classmates Start With the Learners Teachers should begin with the following assumptions about their learners: * they may know much less about technology than the instructor;* they may have limited bandwidth and/or limited data on their phones;and * they do not own tech equipment like cameras, printers, and scanners [ ]learners may not have unlimited time to engage in coursework since they may have to share technology resources in their households There are also topicbased online resources for language learners (e g , Center for Language Study, 2020), reading (e g , PBS Teachers Lounge, 2020), and mathematics (e g , National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2020)
Information literacy lies at the core of lifelong learning. It empowers people in all ages of life to seek, evaluate, use, and create information effectively on their personal, social, occupational, and educational goals. It is a fundamental human right in the digital world and promotes the social inclusion of all nations. The prime focus in this article is on views of the effect of the distance education system on the information literacy of higher education students at the University of Tehran. This article attempts to draw out some key themes and offer a systematic and comprehensive review of all the relevant literature.
