Tag Archives: Online Learning

AERA 2011 — Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Various Instructional Strategies to Establish Social Presence

Joni Dunlap and I presented a paper titled “Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Various Instructional Strategies  to Establish Social Presence” at AERA 2011.

Abstract
Social presence theory explains how people present themselves as “real” through a communication medium and is a popular construct used to describe how people socially interact in online courses. Because of its intuitive appeal, educators have experimented with different ways to establish social presence in their online courses. Over the years, we have tried many strategies—from rich threaded discussions to personal one-on-one emails to digital stories to using social networking tools like Twitter. Over time, we began questioning how students perceive all of the strategies we use (in other words, what strategies were leading to the most bang for our buck). In this paper, we describe our investigation of students’ perceptions of various instructional strategies to establish social presence.

Paper

Slides

Things I’ve Learned in My Online Course So Far

A group of us at the University of Colorado Denver presented at Pearson CiTE 2011.

The session was titled “Things I Have Learned in My Online Course So Far.”

You can see the slides from our presentation below:

But the best part of the presentation was when we had the crowd start brainstorming and sharing the things they have learned in a Google Doc. The final document can be viewed online:

Defeating the Kobayashi Maru: Supporting Student Retention by Balancing the Needs of the Many and the One

Joni Dunlap and I recently had the following paper published in EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

Dunlap, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. R. (2010). Defeating the Kobayashi Maru: Supporting Student Retention by Balancing the Needs of the Many and the OneEDUCAUSE Quarterly, 33(3).

In this article we share strategies for establishing personal, one-on-one relationships between online students and faculty, to attend to identity, individualization, and interpersonal interaction in support of student engagement and retention. Rather than focus on high-tech solutions, we focus on low-tech solutions — the telephone and e-mail — that all faculty and students have at their disposal. These strategies address the needs of the individual within a learning community by striving for balance between group and individual interactions — between the needs of the many and the one.

Read it online

Call for Papers on Emotions in Online Learning

The Internet and Higher Education

Special Issue Call for Papers on, Emotions in Online Learning Environments: Theory, Research, and Practice

Special Issue Editor: Anthony R. Artino, Jr. Ph.D.

Scholars have recently called for more inquiry on the role of emotions in education.  Although the dynamics of emotions that emerge during online learning may be less apparent than those experienced during traditional classroom instruction, limited empirical evidence suggests that emotions are important contributors to learning and achievement in online environments.  However, educators currently know little
about the complexity of student and teacher emotions and their potential influence on academic outcomes in online contexts.

Accordingly, The Internet and Higher Education (INTHIG) invites papers for a special issue focusing on understanding the role of emotions in online learning environments (OLEs).  Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • How emotions develop and evolve in OLEs;
  • How students and teachers regulate their emotions in OLEs;
  • Emotional states and traits in online learning processes;
  • Assessing emotions in OLEs;
  • The influence of emotions on cognition, motivation, behavior, collaboration, and achievement in OLEs;
  • The emotional experience of being an online instructor;
  • How emotional factors can be integrated into existing theories of online learning; and
  • OLE design features and instructional activities that impact student and teacher emotions.

Manuscripts that focus on theoretical, empirical, and practical issues will be considered, and manuscripts that employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods designs are welcomed and encouraged. All submissions should follow the usual format for INTHIG submissions and should adhere to existing INTHIG Author Guidelines, which can be found on the submission website (see link below).

Authors are requested to submit manuscripts via the Elsevier Editorial System no later than June 1, 2011.  The submission website can be found at http://ees.elsevier.com/inthig.  To ensure all manuscripts are correctly identified for inclusion into the special issue, authors are asked to please select << Emotions in OLEs >> when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process.

To request additional information, please contact the Special Issue Editor:

Anthony R. Artino, Jr., Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Phone: (301) 319-6988, Email: anthony.artino@usuhs.mil (email preferred)

Research Articles that Show Distance Education Works


@wcet_info
tweeted the following today:

“Asked to create list of research articles, journal articles, or other “credible” evidence that distance ed works. What would you include?”

I have been asked similar questions in the past. While I usually start by saying that as a whole research on distance education and online learning is still in its infancy, the following are a few articles I point to. These tend to be literature reviews or meta-analyses.

  • Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P. A., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379-439.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/74/3/379.full.pdf+html

  • Tallent-Runnels, M. K., Thomas, J. A., Lan, W. Y., Cooper, S., Ahern, T. C., Shaw, S. M., & Liu, X. (2006). Teaching courses online: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 93-135.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/1/93.full.pdf+html

  • Larreamendy-Joerns, J., & Leinhardt, G. (2006). Going the distance with online education. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 567-605.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/4/567.full.pdf+html

  • Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009). Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. U.S. Department of Education.
    Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

  • Zhao, Y., J. Lei, B. Yan, C. Lai, & H. S. Tan. (2005). What makes the difference? A practical analysis of research on the effectiveness of distance education. Teachers College Record 107 (8):183684.


Did I miss any? What would you include? Please comment.