Adopting and Implementing an E-Learning System for Teaching and Learning in Saudi Public K-12 Schools: The Benefits, Challenges, and Concerns

Classera is an e-learning system that has been adopted for use in a variety of learning environments in K-12 schools in Saudi Arabia. The system can be integrated in online, blended, or traditional settings with the aim of improving teaching and learning and helping students connect with lesson content, teachers, and peers, and teachers connect with parents. The purpose of the current study is to examine the benefits, challenges and concerns surrounding the adoption and implementation of this system. An online survey was used to gather data from a sample of 70 teachers from the 12 schools in which Classera was originally piloted. The results of the study reveal high levels of teacher satisfaction with the use of Classera with benefits including easy delivering of content, facilitating student learning, and encouraging peer collaboration and teacher-parent communication. However, challenges and concerns surrounding issues such as teacher professional development, time for training, and Internet access still persist and need to be taken into consideration to ensure the successful adoption and implementation of Classera in all K-12 schools across Saudi Arabia

Establishing the Importance of Interaction and Presence to Student Learning in Online Environments

With the growing trends in favor of online course offerings in higher education, it is important that researchers continue to focus on investigating the components vital to effectiveness. Using a survey design, the elements of interaction and presence, and their relationship and influence on student learning in an online course is examined in the current study. The findings of the study suggest that students perceive instructor-learner and learner-content interaction to be more important to their learning as compared to learner-learner interaction. In addition, teaching presence plays a more important role in student learning followed by cognitive presence and then social presence. Again, when it comes to the combination of the factors of interaction and presence, the factors that students perceive to have the most influence on their learning are teaching presence and learner-instructor interaction with the least important factor being learner-learner interaction. Overall, the results of this empirical study have implications for online course design and delivery to ensure student learning in online environments

Reliability and Statistical Power: How Measurement Fallibility Affects Power and Required Sample Sizes for Several Parametric and Nonparametric Statistics

The relationship between reliability and statistical power is considered, and tables that account for reduced reliability are presented. A series of Monte Carlo experiments were conducted to determine the effect of changes in reliability on parametric and nonparametric statistical methods, including the paired samples dependent t test, pooled-variance independent t test, one-way analysis of variance with three levels, Wilcoxon signed-rank test for paired samples, and Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test for independent groups. Power tables were created that illustrate the reduction in statistical power from decreased reliability for given sample sizes. Sample size tables were created to provide the approximate sample sizes required to achieve given levels of statistical power based for several levels of reliability