Synergizing Wikis, Vodcasts, and Podcasts for Collaborative Class Texts

This tech-savvy generation of students, known as digital natives, desires to learn and to interact utilizing the collaborative technologies that have always been a part of their lives. The purpose of this paper and corresponding presentation is to demonstrate how a wiki can be used by students and the instructor to create a collaborative text and demonstrate how multimedia can be integrated into the texts using podcasting and vodcasting. A description of the procedures used to design, to produce, and to publish a wiki class text with integrated podcasts will be demonstrated. The challenges and benefits of using these technologies will also be discussed from both a student and faculty perspective

Stewardship in Distance Education: A Comparative Analysis of Technologies that Support Student Learning

Effectively facilitating the growth of learners demonstrates prudent stewardship (Galatians 6:10; Genesis 2:15). As wise stewards of what God has entrusted to them, Christian educators are challenged to identify factors critical for supporting students’ learning in whatever environment they are teaching. When teaching in the online environment, this includes adopting technological applications to support learning. This study compared the use of two technological applications and their affect on student learning. Findings provided evidence that online graduate learners who used the combination of a content management system and e-conferencing system reported significantly higher perceptions of learning than learners who used only the content management system. Additional findings were not significant

Improving Doctoral Candidates’ Persistence in the Online Dissertation Process

Variables associated with doctoral attrition and distance education attrition are academic, social, and emotional. Thus, methods chosen to support doctoral students in the doctoral journey, and more specifically, the dissertation process, should take into account doctoral students needs on both an academic and social/ emotional level. This article examines the use of a collaborative technology, Microsoft Office SharePoint, and its ability to support distance doctoral candidates both socially and academically in the dissertation process in comparison with traditional dissertation facilitation methods

Educational Opportunities for Clinical Counseling Simulations in Second Life

This article will present the pedagogical opportunities of using a 3D virtual learning environment in counselor skills development. A critical competency of counseling students is their ability to demonstrate basic counseling skills including attending, listening, empathy, warmth, and respect. For online educators, assisting their students in developing these skills in realistic counseling situations can be difficult. With the development of new 3D virtual learning environments such as Second Life, educators may be able to assist students with an environment more conducive to developing effective counseling skills. The authors will discuss the possible uses of Second Life in role-playing simulations and offer practical recommendations on the use of a virtual world learning environment in student skill development. This article should provide useful information for instructors and administrators considering virtual environments for role-playing simulations

It’s a Small World: Facilitating Collaboration Among Distance Learners around the World

Web based technologies afford distance educators the opportunity to facilitate collective intelligence, contribution, and collaboration among learners around the world. The workshop will detail features, innovative uses, and significance of web-based technologies including open source content management systems (CMC), open source instructional design and authoring tools, podcasts/vodcasts, 3-D virtual worlds and simulations, collaborative conferencing software, social web marking tools, blogs, and wikis. A discussion of how to choose technologies to most advantageously facilitate your curriculum or program will ensue

SharePoint Collaboration: Streamlining the Dissertation Process for Online Students

In the era of Web 2.0, document editors and collaborative workspaces have emerged. Primary functions of online collaborative workspaces include the ability to create a documents and document libraries online for others to view and collaborate and share document resources; thus, simplifying and streamlining projects that require collaboration. SharePoint is one such collaborative workspace. SharePoint is a server that has allowed for the simplifying and streamlining of the dissertation process for online students. The use of the various features of SharePoint for collaboration on dissertations are discussed. Benefits of using SharePont are outlined

Technologies that Assist in Closing the Achievement Gap: A Comparison African American and Caucasian Students’ Learning and Community in the Online Classroom

Higher Education administrators and educators seek to understand how to design and to facilitate online courses to ensure quality, culturally responsive online education for minority students, specifically African American students, and to close the academic achievement gap that exists today. This study examines online students’ using both synchronous and asynchronous technologies to determine whether students’ social presence, cognitive presence, teacher presence, and perceived learning differ based upon ethnicity. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted. Results yielded no significant difference in dependent variables based on ethnicity

Motivating Students to Learn: Is There a Difference between Traditional Books and e-Books?

Electronic books have been identified as a current trend in education and are being increasingly adopted by students as their textbook format of choice. However, limited studies on electronic books as a learning tool exist. Thus, this pilot study compares the use of e-books and traditional books as a learning tool in an undergraduate classroom on undergraduate students’ motivation

Neophyte Group Therapists (NGTs): Needs, Training, and Supervision

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