Anthony G. Picciano
Graduate Center and Hunter College, City University of New York Guest Editor/ Associate Editor, OLJ
The International Conference on Online Learning traces its origin to a 1995 one-day meeting of grantees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Anytime, Anyplace Learning Program held in Philadelphia. Ninety individuals attended this first meeting where several invited speakers presented on the possibilities of online learning....
Aimee deNoyelles
University of Central Florida
Beatriz Reyes-Foster
University of Central Florida
Being actively engaged in a task is often associated with critical thinking. Cultivating critical thinking skills, such as purposefully reflecting and analyzing one’s own thinking, is a major goal of higher education. However, there is a challenge in providing college students opportunities to clearly demonstrate these skills in online courses. This research explores the effectiveness of incorporating word clouds—visual representations of word frequency in a given passage of text—into online discussions. We sought to establish whether implementing word clouds in online discussions would result in a higher incidence of critical thinking and engagement. Survey results from undergraduate participants (n=132) revealed that students analyzing text in word clouds reported moderately higher scores on critical thinking and engagement than students analyzing the text in a linear fashion. A positive relationship was found between critical thinking and engagement, as well as peer interaction. This strategy can be applied to a wide range of educational environments to stimulate critical thinking and engagement.
Linda Rohr
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Jane Costello
Memorial University of Newfoundland
During the Winter and Spring 2014 semesters students registered in the online offering of Human Kinetics and Recreation 1000 (N=589) were asked to participate in two Twitter events encompassing two of the course’s assessment activities. In each Twitter event, students were required to post, at minimum, one original tweet and...
Alan R. Belcher, Barbara M. Hall, Kathleen Kelley and Keith L. Pressey
Ashford University
The purposes of the research were to (1) examine the relationships between faculty behaviors that promote critical thinking and the resulting critical thinking within peer interaction and (2) identify specific faculty behaviors that result in the highest levels of critical thinking within peer interactions. Using a concurrent embedded mixed methods...
Natalie B. Milman, Laurie Posey, Christine Pintz, Kayla Wright and Pearl Zhou
The George Washington University
This article presents the quantitative findings of an exploratory mixed methods study that investigatedfirst- and second-year online graduate master’s students’: 1) perceptions of the importance of, andsatisfaction with, administrative, academic, technical, and online community supports; 2) personal factorsand grit level; and 3) differences, if any, that existed among students, in...
David Wicks, Baine B. Craft, Donghun (Don) Lee, Andrew Lumpe, Robin Henrikson, Nalline Baliram, Xu Bian, Stacy Mehlberg and Katy Wicks
Seattle Pacific University
Researchers in a recent study found that online students’ ability to self-regulate led to more focused attention and time on task, and in turn, these skills could lead to better learning. Given the need for more theoretical work in this area, as well as the potential practical benefits from the...
Daniella Smith University of North Texas
The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how the gender of distance learning students related to variables such as the perception of the availability of library resources, technology available at home and work, technology provided by a university for distance learning, and career preparedness. A total of 166...
Patsy Moskal, Kelvin Thompson, Linda Futch
Center for Distributed Learning, University of Central Florida
BlendKit is a 5-week course designed by the University of Central Florida in an open, online format specifically for the professional development of higher education faculty and designers preparing to design and teach blended learning courses. The evaluation of this course provides us with interesting and valuable information on the...
Jean M. Taylor and Margie Dunn
Excelsior College
Sandra K. Winn
Empire State College
A team of instructional designers, educators, and the School of Liberal Arts (SLA) academic program coordinator from a nonprofit online college, collaborated on producing short voice-over videos with interactive elements that address the most common technology frustrations of beginning students. These videos were inserted into the “Start Here” page of...
Aaron O. Thomas, Geoff Lee and Brian Ess
University of Florida
The following paper describes the rationale for creating an online therapy program of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, for students at the University of Florida who are struggling with stress and anxiety. In addition, the paper discusses the unique challenges of the instructional design process of creating psychoeducational materials through...
Peter Shea, PhD, Editor-in-Chief,
Online Learning University at Albany, State University of New York
This issue contains two additional articles that were not specifically selected from sessions conducted at the Online Learning Consortium’s Annual Conference. These two articles provide insight into faculty attitudes about and student engagement in online learning....
Jennifer Bunk, Rui Li, Esther Smidt, Christopher Bidetti and Brett Malize
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
The purpose of the present study is to further understand faculty attitudes about distance education by exploring the psychological processes through which these attitudes are influenced. We explored the following research question: Do feelings of excitement versus fear mediate and/or moderate the relationship between online teaching experience and various faculty...
Marcia D. Dixson
Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne
Student engagement is critical to student learning, especially in the online environment, where students can often feel isolated and disconnected. Therefore, teachers and researchers need to be able to measure student engagement. This study provides validation of the Online Student Engagement scale (OSE) by correlating student self-reports of engagement (via...
