In 2006–2007, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded a grant to the Sloan Consortium and Hunter College to conduct a survey of online learning in K–12 schools. For more than a decade, the Foundation had been most generous in awarding grants for online learning that focused on higher education, however,...

Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. His fields of scholarship include emerging technologies, policy, and leadership. His funded research includes a grant from the National Science Foundation to aid middle school students learning science via shared virtual environments and...

Over the past decade online learning initiatives have shown tremendous potential for broadening educational opportunities and for addressing local and regional shortages of highly qualified K–12 teachers. The Louisiana Algebra I Online initiative represents one type of online model than can address both the need for improving course offerings and...

Online education is a rapidly growing phenomenon for science teachers. Using a sample of 40 online science courses for teachers offered during the 2004–2005 academic year, the Learning Science Online (LSO) study examines the nature and variety of instructional methods and activities as well as communication, and students’ perceptions of...

One of the more challenging aspects of teaching online is promoting content-focused, collaborative dialogue among students. How do we move discussants beyond initial brainstorming toward more focused, deepened dialogue that clearly supports a course’s instructional goals? Garrison and Anderson’s framework for communities of inquiry illuminates the critical interplay among social...

This study examines the patterns and substance of student self introductions in nine fully online graduate courses in education. A composite of social identity frameworks with an emphasis on language as the tool for self-presentation is first developed to guide the analysis and interpretation of these data. In particular Sfard...

The research literature on online learning has grown significantly in the past decade. Many studies have been published that examine the extent, nature, policies, learning outcomes, and other issues associated with online instruction. While much of this literature focuses specifically on postsecondary education with approximately three million students presently enrolled...