Metacognitive Supports in Online Community College Learners

Community colleges provide educational, social and professional lifelines for students. Community college students are often characterized by their need to balance school amidst conflicting life needs, such as employment and family. As a result, many community college students struggle to find time to commit to on campus classes. Asynchronous online courses offer these students flexibility. Without the ability to self-regulate their learning, this mode of learning has been shown to be more challenging, resulting in students who succeed and persist in coursework less consistently. This quantitative, quasi experimental study involving 92 asynchronous online community college participants from the southeast, explores support structures designed to assist learners in developing effective self-regulation practice. The research combines a two-factor quasi experimental design comparing the use of training that incorporates cognitive modeling, self-reflective prompts and the combination of these elements to evaluate their effect on calibration ability and academic performance. Metacognitive awareness is used as a covariate. Results of this study showed no significant difference between treatment groups in regard to either calibration ability or academic performance based on the elements of the training intervention. Descriptive statistics combine with these results to both support and challenge existing research, and continued research and updates to heuristic practice are suggested

REMOTE EDUCATION IN THE TIMES OF COVID-19 AND THE FUTURE OF E-LEARNING

Digitalization, globalization, and online learning have revolutionized the educational scenario. It was not long ago when remote learning, which essentially means learning without being physically present in the boundaries of an educational institution, was condemned and deemed "ineffective". However, the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus has forced students and teachers to adopt remote learning, causing unprecedented changes in the learning process. Based on the recent switch to remote learning, it is safe to say that not only remote education ensures better reach and lifelong learning, but it is also learner-oriented, flexible, convenient, economical, and saves a lot of time and resources. The need of the hour is to make remote learning available to everyone, by broadcasting lessons on television, radio, social media, YouTube, distributing informative books, and attention-grabbing pamphlets. Keeping in mind the benefits and freedom that come with remote education, we can presume that remote education is here to stay. The present paper will analyze the educational scenario during COVID-19, andwill also discuss the future of E-learning as a brighter prospect for students around the world.  It will attempt to provide insights into the various aspects of remote learning through the analysis of the results ofan online survey, which was conducted on seventeen students from different countries all over the globe. The participants shared their views and experiences regarding the remote learning experiences during Covid-19.Keywords: Education during Covid-19, future of e-learning, remote learning as an effective tool to promote worldwide education and literacy

The DISCOVER Model: A Prescriptive Method for Instructional Tool Selection and Use in Seeking to Boost Instructor Immediacy and Social Presence in Online Courses

Higher education faculty who teach online can face numerous challenges in providing optimal experiences for their students. Besides their potentially limited instructional design expertise and understanding of how to optimize technology to support learning, faculty may have difficulties in finding ways to make themselves be perceived as real people who are approachable, caring, and likeable due to online nature of the learning context. As a preliminary means to address these issues, the current study focused on the development of the DISCOVER Model, which was designed to provide higher education faculty with a framework to develop actionable plans in the creation of audio and video media assets while focusing on best practices to boost student perceptions of instructor immediacy and instructor social presence. This model, developed as an enhancement to the ADDIE model of instructional design, provides a sequence of eight steps across design and development, and implementation and evaluation phases, that guide instructors through making informed choices in creating media assets and revising them. This mixed-method study took place at a university in the Appalachian region of the United States and focused on two undergraduate courses and two graduate courses taught by three instructors. The instructors used The DISCOVER Model to create media assets for their courses and 136 students opted into completing an online survey about their experiences that sought to measure their perceptions of instructor immediacy and social presence. Instructors participated in regular meetings and a summative interview with the researcher and six students were interviewed. Instructors were also assigned model adherence scores by the researcher based on how closely they were perceived to follow the model in creating their media assets. The results indicated that instructors who showed high model adherence had students who indicated moderately high perceptions of instructor social presence and immediacy. Further, graduate students indicated higher perceptions of social presence perceptions than undergraduate students. Findings and implications were discussed

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF THE QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE ONLINE SOFTWARE INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF THE QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE ONLINE SOFTWARE INSTRUCTIONAL VIDE

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

USING PRAISE TO INCREASE VISUAL ATTENDING IN AN ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: AN EYE TRACKING STUDY

With the emergence of online courses in the mid-1990s, the number of students enrolled in online courses has been growing at an exponential rate (Schwirzke, Vashaw, & Watson, 2018). This trend brings with it new problems, such as familiarity with evidence-supported behavioral techniques that will maintain student engagement and improve likelihood of academic success in online learning environments. The purpose of the present study was to examine how the use of praise may affect visual engagement with video lectures with the assistance of commercially available eye tracking technology. A secondary objective of the study was to identify how praise affects performance on post-lecture knowledge assessments of information delivered through online videos. Results indicated that three out of four undergraduate participants were visually engaged with the video lecture more when provided praise than in the absence of praise, while the fourth participant showed ceiling effects. Results also indicated that praise did not have a significant effect on post-lecture knowledge assessment accuracy. These results indicate that praise may have utility in improving visual engagement in online learning environments and that inexpensive eye tracking technology may be useful for measuring visual engagement in these environments

Collaboration and Community in Undergraduate Writing Synchronous Video Courses (SVCs)

From the 2013 Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI), OWI Principle 11 suggests, “Online writing teachers and their institutions should develop personalized and interpersonal online communities to foster student success.” Previous discussions of synchronous modalities have suggested interpersonal benefits of this mode could aid in creating these communities and could minimize the isolation and transactional distance students can experience in asynchronous instruction, which in turn can impact their persistence and learning. However, with little research on this modality, it is difficult to corroborate this assumption or design synchronous courses to best exploit these potential benefits. This study examined a particular type of synchronous online writing course, synchronous video courses (SVCs), exploring how and why students participated and interacted in certain ways in these courses and how their experiences influenced their sense of community and learning. A triangulated methodology of discourse analysis of class interactions and thematic analysis of interviews with students and instructors from the observed courses was used to present the prevalent discourse patterns within these courses and to contextualize these patterns within students’ and instructors’ experiences. Challenges for verbal interaction, the role of textual interaction, the value of small group interaction, and the impact of interfaces on learning emerged as key findings to understand this modality. The findings suggest there is value in this instructional modality, but it requires unique pedagogical strategies and specific training for students and instructors