This study investigated the benefits and challenges associated with the use of virtual labs to teach students, as well as solutions to overcome the challenges.  This study was because of the need to develop and implement virtual labs in Zambian institutions of learning.  There are plans in Zambia to use virtual labs to supplement the existing laboratory infrastructure and their application would be in a blended type of setting. The study comprised the use of interviews of ten career and technical education (CTE) teachers and five CTE administrators who were from various local school systems and one community college in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The researcher conducted the interviews, analyzed the data, and determined conclusions. The CTE administrators and teachers all agreed that the benefits of virtual labs included flexibility, hands-on learning, and convenience.  With regard to challenges, CTE administrators indicated the following: inadequate teacher preparation for virtual teaching; constant technological changes, which meant more training for them; software problems; and teachers' resistance to the changes in their curricula.  Teachers, on the other hand, had the following challenges: inadequate communication between them and the technology centers in the schools, frequent failure of laboratory equipment and software, incompetent students allowed to study virtually, and inadequate training to teach in a virtual environment. CTE administrators identified three solutions to the challenges which they had faced.  In order to ensure that their virtual programs were running smoothly, they felt that adequate funding needed to be obtained and kept in the budget for training new and older teachers in the use of new teaching software.  They identified various venues for training teachers, including attendance at conferences, technological expositions, and bringing in software vendors to train the teachers on site.  The administrators also thought that providing adequate and prompt technical support when teachers had technical problems could help overcome the identified challenges.  On the other hand, CTE teachers thought that collaborating with other teachers who were facing similar problems would be an excellent way to overcome challenges.  They also indicated that initial training and continual training to update their skills would help them overcome problems. / Ph. D.

Coincidental increases in online instruction at institutions of higher education and in online social networking generally in the U.S. have created opportunities for research into how digital interpersonal connectivity affects online learning. This study examined interactive webcasts, or webcasts plus chat, that were part of an online undergraduate course covering Internet knowledge and skills at a large public university. Symbolic interactionism served as the theoretical framework for explicating interactive webcasts as useful online learning environments by exploring the complex processes that instructional staff employed to manage their actions and interactions as moderators in the webcasts and chats. A constructivist grounded theory approach guided the collection and analysis of empirical data in the form of webcast media and transcripts, chat logs, students‘ reflective writing, and semi-structured, intensive interviews with instructional staff. From the study emerged theoretical categories in three tiers related to a generalized moderator process called minding the verge: moderators minded the verge in three conditions of interaction– converging, attending, and diverging; in three loci of interaction – webcasts, chats, and webcasts+chat; and through six actions of moderating – bonding, orientating, guiding, tending, validating, and branching. The results of this study provide moderators for the course with insights into their actions in the interactive webcasts and with concepts moderators can use to explore how to manage interactive webcasts more effectively. Beyond effecting substantive changes to interactive webcasts for the course, the study may guide others who wish to pursue further studies of webcasts+chat as they occur in the course or elsewhere, or of other mixed-media environments, or who wish to adopt mixed-media environments for instruction. Other potential areas for research that emerged from this study include the affective states of participants in the webcasts+chat and the use of affective devices, such as emoticons and abbreviations, for showing affective states; the effect that format has on the efficacy of webcasts+chat used for computer-mediated instruction; and the processes students employ to manage actions and interactions in the webcasts and chats. / text

This thesis study analyzed the individual difference factors affecting the success of online instruction. The factors that were examined are mastery goal orientation, learning self efficacy, and conscientiousness. The success of online instruction was examined in terms of the knowledge and skill acquisition during training, the practice level, and program completion rate. To investigate the effects of the hypothesized factors, an online instruction program on time management, fast and effective reading, and memory skills was developed and administered to a sample of college students. Results showed that the developed online instruction program improved time management knowledge and fast reading skills of participants. Additionally, conscientiousness was found to predict the program completion rate. On the other hand, results failed to support the suggestions that mastery goal orientation would predict the undertaken practice level and the improvements in knowledge and skill levels. The proposed predictive relationships between learning self-efficacy and practice level as well as between conscientiousness and practice level were not supported either. Finally, the claim that completing the training program would improve the learning self efficacy of the participants was not supported.

Bivariate correlation was used to examine possible relationships between instructor immediacy and instructor presence, and a statistically significant correlation was found. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine whether the linear combination of instructor immediacy and presence caused significant variance in student affective learning, cognition, and motivation. For all three of the latter dependent variables, the linear combination of instructor immediacy and presence was found to cause statistically significant variance. However, although the overall regression models were significant in all three tests, instructor immediacy was not found to be a significant individual predictor for causing variance in affective learning, cognition, or motivation, whereas instructor presence was found to be a significant individual predictor of all three. Finally, factorial ANOVA revealed that, for perceptions of instructor immediacy, only classification and course type were found to explain significant variance, with undergraduate students in asynchronous courses reporting significantly lower instructor immediacy. For perceptions of instructor presence, graduate students tended to rate their instructors as having higher presence than did undergraduate students, and students in synchronous courses tended to rate their instructors as having higher presence than did students in asynchronous courses.

In 2017, the Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University launched the Library Ambassador Program (LAP), a peer-reference program through which trained undergraduate students employed by the library are stationed in buildings across campus to help students with their research. Just as the LAP was gaining traction, COVID-19 forced a quick transition to online mode. This presentation will discuss the value we found in shifting our program online and how the LAP functions now in a hybrid space, supporting information literacy both online and in-person across campuses. Participants wishing to develop their own peer-mentoring program will come away with practical tips on creating an information literacy curriculum designed for a hybrid environment and implementing a hybrid service model for peer-reference help.

The purpose of this study was to analyze organizational learning and the facilitating factors and critical elements for development of post-secondary distance education and online degree programs at three universities in Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Hilo (public), Hawaii Pacific University and Chaminade University (both private). The researcher interviewed campus officials, key staff and tenured professors who had been instrumental in development of these programs. The data revealed that the growth of these programs was organic, with no formal edict, with only one institution having formalized grant monies to help develop their program. Support for distance programs was not widespread throughout the campus, but rather focused in compartmentalized areas, and in some cases, began with one person venturing out of 'the norm.' This organic growth led to a gradual, but minimal increase in faculty involvement, and administrative support, albeit without any significant investment in course architecture and software support, initially. Institutional support has continued, but does not encourage in a broad sense, continued distance education growth, nor faculty involvement. Marketplace considerations proved a heavy influence on development of these programs. Many students continue to be geographically isolated and there is a heavy concentration of military being transferred from their existing base, and university, unable to transfer credits to a new university at their new duty station. Further development of distance education and online degree programs is a means of assisting institutions of higher learning in reaching more students, geographically isolated from main campus operations. This applies to those existing and potential students in Hawaii, as well as abroad and in the continental United States. Although distance education and online degree programs do not totally replace campus-based courses at these institutions, they do provide an augmentation of existing classroom architecture and allow the student more freedom in the pathway to degree completion.

Enrollment in online courses has increased rapidly in the last two decades, and exponentially in the last few years (Seaman, Allen, & Allen, 2018) as part of an e-revolution, especially in business schools (Kumar, Kumar, Palvia, & Verma, 2019), in which access to and use of information technology has become widespread. Instructors are one of the most important variables in online teaching as they function as the source of content for, and facilitators of, the online course. Some faculty, however, are ambivalent about teaching online for a variety of reasons (Mitchell, Parlamis, & Claiborne, 2015), and this ambivalence can be the impetus for the failure of the online course implementation. In addition, although research (“No significant difference”, n.d.) demonstrates that learning in online classes is comparable to learning in on-ground courses, instructors’ attitudes toward online teaching remain divided.In this chapter, I offer a brief review of Mitchell et al. (2015) and its general recommendations for management educators to help overcome their resistance to online teaching. I then expand upon what was previously written by sharing specific recommendations and resources focused on faculty, and for administrators to use with faculty, as they attempt the change to online teaching. To this end, I begin with a discussion of the notion of fit in the context of selecting faculty with a particular set of characteristics that are best suited to teaching online courses. The next portion of the chapter offers a research-derived list of best practices for new online instructors – addressing both hard and soft issues. Next, the discussion continues with a brief review of additional factors pertinent to teaching online but not included in the previous list. This will include topics gleaned both from research and over a decade and a half of personal online and hybrid experience as a management educator.

In the present study, the Cultural Adaptation Process Model was applied to an online module to include adaptations responsive to the online students' culturally-influenced learning styles and preferences. The purpose was to provide the online learners with a variety of course material presentations, where the e-learners had the opportunity to select their preferred structure for learning. The research methodology for the study is Design-Based Research (DBR), which has been identified by many prominent researchers in Instructional Technology as the most productive research approach for the field. DBR integrates different data types and data collection methods (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed) with experience in instructional development and the participants' collaboration. The study produced design principles that are expected to be useful for practitioners when adapting online courses to multicultural audiences. To provide thorough information to instructional designers, the research report includes a detailed description of each phase, an estimate of hours invested per development and testing stages, a list of outcomes found, and a set of recommendations for improving the cultural adaptation model applied. The study is expected to be valuable for educational institutions and corporations that offer online courses to multicultural groups of e-learners.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the beliefs of 5 experienced instructors about the ways adults learn in online professional development (OPD) courses, beliefs about creating online learning environments, and beliefs about instructional strategies for facilitating adult learning. The following questions guided this study: 1. What are the instructor’s beliefs about the ways that adults learn in online professional development courses? 2. What are the instructor’s beliefs about creating an online learning environment for adult learners? 3. What are the instructor’s beliefs about the use of instructional strategies to facilitate online learning with adults? The setting for the study was the professional development program of a large metropolitan school district in the southeastern United States. Data were collected through interviews, discussion board postings, and instructor journals and analyzed using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The following themes emerged from the data: • Adult learning in OPD courses is an active process of making connections and applying knowledge and skills. • Learning for adults in OPD courses must be useful, meaningful, relevant, practical, adaptable, and applicable to the work setting. • Learning for adults in an OPD course requires more effort and commitment than learning in face-to-face professional development settings. • Adult learners in OPD courses need a comfort zone where they can feel “safe” communicating and interacting with learners and the instructor. • Adult learners need varying amounts of encouragement, support, guidance, and nurturing within a positive online learning environment(OLE)that supports and sustains them. • Instructors believe that collaboration is an effective strategy for facilitating learning with adults in OPD courses, yet existing barriers limit collaboration. • The OPD instructor is a flexible facilitator of learning who uses different types of feedback to confirm, correct, and inform learning with adults.

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