Volume 11, Issue 3 - January 1970

Introduction to the Special Issue on Online Learning in K–12 Schools and Teacher Education

Anthony G. Picciano, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York

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,...

Interview with Chris Dede

Anthony G. Picciano, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York

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...

The Louisiana Algebra I Online Initiative as a Model for Teacher Professional Development: Examining Teacher Experiences

Laura M. O’Dwyer, Boston College, Lynch School of Education
Rebecca Carey, Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
Glenn Kleiman, Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)

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...

Learning Science Online: A Descriptive Study of Online Science Courses for Teachers

Jodi Asbell-Clarke, TERC
Elizabeth Rowe, TERC

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...

An Interpretive Model of Key Heuristics that Promote Collaborative Dialogue Among Online Learners

Sarah Haavind, Lesley University

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...

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Ether: A Corpus Analysis of Student Self-Tellings in Online Graduate Courses

Carla Meskill, University at Albany, State University of New York
Gulnara Sadykova, University at Albany, State University of New York

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...

K–12 Online Learning: A Survey of U.S. School District Administrators

Anthony G. Picciano, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Jeff Seaman, The Sloan Consortium, Olin and Babson Colleges

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...