Despite the growth in the size and acceptance of distance education, there have been persistent criticisms of this form of education because it often fails to provide for interaction among students and between students and instructors. Without this, it is suggested, distance education can only be an inferior imitation of the best face-to-face education because learners are unable to clarify and challenge assumptions and to construct meaning through dialogue. Some critics believe distance education's inability to reproduce a critical dialogue among students and between students and instructor can be addressed through the use of two-way communication technologies such as text-based, asynchronous (i.e., not in real time) computer conferencing. Appropriately-designed computer conferencing, it is argued, will facilitate interaction among students and between the instructor and students thus making distance education more appropriate for the higher-level cognitive goals of college and university education. At the same time, using this' technology will retain the flexibility of time and place-independence that is characteristic of distance education. The literature on educational computer conferencing is replete with references to its potential to create a new paradigm of education characterized by interactive group knowledge-building and critical thinking, but there are few empirical studies that have substantiated this view. Little is known about how and why learners participate and what factors may affect their participation. Similarly there has been little empirical study of the quality of computer conferencing interaction. This case study of a university-level course delivered by computer conferencing was designed to address these issues. It was guided by two purposes: 1) to determine whether the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of participation in this online course were consistent with key aspects of the new paradigm of networked learning as articulated in the literature, that is, if students were actively participating, building on each others contributions and thinking critically about the discussion topics; and 2) to determine what factors affected student participation and critical thinking. The results of this study suggest that some of the claims about the potential of this technology to transform conventional and distance education may be overstated. The emergence of a dynamic and interactive educational process that facilitates critical thinking was shown to be contingent on a variety of factors. The results suggest, however, that with the appropriate course design, instructor interventions, content, and students, computer conferencing can be used for these purposes and should be given serious consideration by distance educators as a way of facilitating interaction and critical thinking in distance education.

Education methodology of people with disabilities is not very well developed and it is the reason why disabled people are facing problems in using of unadapted educational materials. More and more disabled people are choosing distance learning due to its convenience and possibility to learn from home. In most cases materials are presented in hypertext format. There are no sufficient tools for adaptation of hypertext documents for disabled people usage and it makes work with those documents very hard or even impossible. Due to the fact, that preparation of teachers and professors for work with hypertext may be very time consuming and difficult, this thesis’s where trying to use different approach - find a solution for non HTML literate person to adapt HTML documents for disabled people. Set of rules was created and flexible tool lets effectively adapt hypertext materials for disabled.

Obesity affects over 100 million men, women, and children in North America alone and has reached what health professionals deem to be epidemic proportions. Being overweight can contribute to or cause chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Left unabated, it will lead to the premature death of millions. Clinical practice relies primarily on individual interventions to bring about lifestyle change. However, this may not be sufficient to reverse the trend on a population scale. Distance education is one area that is seen by some as one of the tools that is capable of reaching such a large audience. This mixed methods case study examined the perceived utility of a number of distance education tools and technologies and the likelihood of overweight and obese individuals adopting and using them. A number of distance education tools and technologies were found to be very useful, some that could be promising but will require further study, and still others that don't offer value and won't for the foreseeable future. / August 2011

The main goal of this project is to analyze structure, possibilities, principles of creation, users requirements and extend functionality of the present system (ViPS), which is designed for distance education. This system gives possibilities to Lithuanian institutions of science and education to supply distance studies in all over the country. Besides that, it gives possibility of life-long learning to all people. System is oriented to synchronous education, but it also supports asynchronous. Material of lectures contains of video records and lecture material (usually slides) made by professor. ViPS can be used by four types of users: lecture listeners (outside users), professors, institution and system administrators. Users activities are: • Outside user – has an opportunity to look through the list of courses, participate in lectures, get news by email, execute search, change data of profile and accession. • Professor – despite outside user’s functions, can also give lectures, describe courses and lecture material (metadata). • Administrator of institution – despite professor’s functions, has a possibility to attach non-grouped users to institution, give special access rights (can change user status to professor) to users, register institution resources. • System administrator – despite institution administrator’s functions, can create groups, send system news to users, create licenses, register institutions, control user groups. The modern CASE tool “Rational... [to full text]

The key aim of the designed system is to create the e-teaching and e-learning tool to be applied for the studies of the module “Designing Hypertext Systems”, taught at the Faculty of Business and Technologies of Utena College. The major objective of the system is to facilitate the studies of the abovementioned module and ease the communication between professors and students, who are not able to attend lectures due to reasonable excuses, as well as part-time students. Seeking to clarify the relevance of the designed tool, as well as the need for it and, in pursuance of its efficiency, the following directional issues have been analysed: institutions that organise training based on distance technologies; spheres that cover the majority of offers for such training; tools that are accessible to all the persons requesting them; the number of offers in relation to particular title of the designed system “Designing Hypertext Systems”; its accessibility to common users and conformity of its contents to the contents of the mentioned module; advantages and disadvantages of distance education; possibilities to make use of the system for presumptive users of the system, their motivation, requests and proposals; supply of website design tools, educational material for e-teaching, as well as training methodology. In addition to that, the analysis of the already existing decisions has been also carried out. In the result of what, conclusions have been drawn on the fact that designing of... [to full text]

This study explores how to integrate faculty-initiated Internet-facilitated international academic partnerships into their local university environments. Recently some faculty have begun initiating international partnership activities which carryout their university's research, teaching, and service missions. These partnerships (including courses, projects, or entire programs) are considered by their initiators to benefit both faculty and student development. Faculty see the Internet as enabling them to construct interactive and collaborative virtual forums where disperse student and faculty bodies can co-engage in exciting international research, teaching, and learning opportunities. This study aims to encourage the development of Internet-facilitated international academic partnerships so that more faculty in all disciplines are supported by their local institutions to better integrate their partnerships. Presently, partnerships are not well integrated. Impart this is because the Internet as a communication tool is relatively new phenomenon. However, it is also due to the tendency for faculty level partnerships to be overlooked by higher levels of university administration. As a result, the value of Internet partnerships has not yet been explored in relation to their local institutional missions. This study therefore consults faculty with experience partnering online in order to garner faculty insights pertaining to partnership integration. The results help to determine (1) core characteristics of these faculty-level partnerships (2) faculty motivations for initiating them (3) university environments implicated by integration and (4) identify faculty support and development opportunities appropriate to support integration.

<p>The study attempts to understand how distance education practices influence the learning of calculus. Understanding student learning in a distance education environment is an important factor to consider in improving the learning experiences of students who for one reason or the other opt not to study in conventional institutional of higher education. On one hand, understanding student learning may illuminate the influences that the learning environment has on student learning and on the other hand, it may inform on how learning experiences can be improved. The aim of this study is to acquire a deeper understanding of the diverse manner in which distance students learn calculus, Specific focus is also placed on the distance education contect of the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) influences student learning. The study describes a group of student's experiences of learning calculus in the ZOU distance education environment.</p>

Distance Learning (DL) is recognized to be a contemporary mode of education delivery. It is used to respond to the need of human resource development in developing countries. The evolution of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is seen as an opportunity for the development of DL. DL through ICT is perceived as an opportunity for meeting most of the challenges of higher education systems in Sub-Sahara Africa in general, and in Rwanda in particular. Planning and implementing DL as an innovation in the education system of Rwanda are processes which need to be understood if DL is to expand and contribute to human resource development in different sectors. The aim of this study was to analyze the process of planning and implementing DL in tertiary health professional education in the Kigali Health Institute and in tertiary teacher education in the Kigali Institute of Education, in order to understand the dynamics of planning and implementing DL, and to suggest the way forward for the success of those two programs. Concepts taken from innovation Havelock's problem solving strategy (1982) and social system theories in particular Owens's open sociotechnical systems for schools (1998) were combined to form the framework which guided this study. A qualitative case study, using a comparative descriptive approach, was the research design. The participants were drawn from (a) policy makers in the ministry of education, ministry of health, ministry of public services and the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA); (b) management in the participating institutions; (c) the teaching staff, especially those who were involved and/or are still involved in the process; (d) students; (e) and members of professional regulatory bodies. Purposive and theoretical sampling was used to select the participants. Twenty one informants were interviewed. Three focus group discussions of six, four and eight participants respectively were conducted. In addition document review and analysis, and physical artefacts served also as means of data collection. The results showed that systematic planning with a comprehensive document and strategic plan as outcome of the planning process are essential for the successful implementation of distance learning in Rwanda. Supportive and responsive institutions and suprasystems are indispensable to a conducive environment for planning and implementing DL in Rwanda. From the results, recommendations for the progress of the two programs that were part of this study were put forward. A framework of planning and implementing DL in Rwanda was developed based on these results. This framework may be used by policy makers, educators and other parties interested in the development of DL in Rwanda. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

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This thesis presents a systematic review regarding the way technology supports adult learning in communities of practice. It presents the systematic review procedure that was developed, based on NBS CRD (2001) protocol, from publication sources relevant to the topic. It includes the identification of research from an initial question that is: how does technology support adult learning in communities of practice. In addition, it presents a search strategy, a study quality assessment, a data extraction strategy and a synthesis of findings. Because most of the pertinent research is qualitative, a typology of qualitative research and a critical appraisal checklist for quality assessment were designed and are presented. The results presented have synthesized evidence from studies that meet certain quality criteria and they are discussed in terms of (a) the kinds of technologies applied in communities of practice, and (b) successful features of the technology that seem to contribute to learning.