Authors discuss several online and offline community-building strategies that may be used to foster a positive social dynamic in online courses.

Using the right questions to promote critical thinking in OAD.

Presentation with samples of Socratic questions for student use in ODB. Also, guidelines for evaluation of potential questions. Note: File only opened in IE.

This paper provides a brief overview of constructivist learning theory and explores its implications for instruction in terms of the design of online learning environments that are learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, and community centered. It then presents a model for organizing thinking about technology-mediated learning within a social constructivist frame. The RCET model distinguishes three interacting domains of knowledge construction -- conceptualization, representation, and use --within which the unique affordances and constraints of the online medium and their effects on learning can be scrutinized. It is hoped that so narrowing the focus of inquiry might guide research to pursue findings which can meaningfully inform practice and advance online learning.

The purpose of this study is to balance student characteristic research with external, direct data from the perspective of online instructors in order to provide a practice-oriented understanding of the unique factors predictive of student success in accelerated, on line courses. Four issues emerge as the most predictive of online learner success: time, technology, initiative, and competence. Discussion examines the practical, deliberate application of this information to facilitate students' successful completion of online courses.

Paper lists learner centricity, asynchronous interaction, communication effectiveness and assessment facilitation as the major pedagogical attributes of online discussion boards. Also discusses the strategy of applying data mining techniques to aid assessment of discussion board transcripts. Text mining as an extension of data mining algorithm could be used effectively to assess discussion board transcripts with the goal of eliminating subjectivity in the assessment of discussion board contributions.

Article analyzes types of interaction that occur during online discussions, examines levels of student cognitive engagement in each discussion, and explores their effects on and implications for learning and teaching in higher education. By combining methods of social network analysis with qualitative content analysis, the article explores new methodologies for analyzing participation, interaction, and learning that take place online, and suggests areas for research in learning and teaching online.

Results of study using content analysis of online discussion groups confirm that interaction in the discussion is very task-oriented, stays task-oriented and reflects high phases in knowledge construction. Clear results can be presented about the impact of the amount of discussion activity on the nature and quality of the discussions and the phases of knowledge construction.

The abundance of freely available information also has changed the role of educators. It's no longer about us standing in front of class and providing information. It's about helping these learners contextualize that information. Helping them connect it to what is out there in the real world and give it foundation and meaning. They have access to the information already, but can they critically evaluate it and figure out which piece goes into which puzzle? Then the question becomes, how should we, as instructors, be helping them? One method to facilitate this process is to have the students contribute to the class content. There are a variety of sites out there that combine content curation with a social networking component, thereby allowing users to discover, organize, and share content around a specific topic.

What is Content Curation? As instructors, we are all information curators. How do you collect and share currently relevant content with your students? How do your students research and share information that they find with the rest of class? What tools do you use to manage or facilitate presentation of resources? Is it public? Can students access it at other times? In groups? Modern web tools make it easy for both students and instructors to contribute online discoveries to class conversations. Using free online content curation software, we can easily integrate new content in a variety of ways."

To meet the challenge of decision making in client care, the nurse needs a comprehensive data base - gathering data is a prerequisite for problem solving and individualized interventions. Assessment is now a critical part of every nurse's practice, as all nursing decisions and actions are based on initial and ongoing assessments. Therefore it is extremely important for nursing students to develop excellent assessment skills. This blended course is designed to develop the cognitive processes and psychomotor skills necessary for conducting health assessments of healthy individuals. In other words, students learn how to gather data, what data to gather and what to do with the data once is has been gathered. Nursing students must understand what the expected assessment findings are for each system, before they can recognize any abnormalities that might be seen in clinical courses. To this extent, the students must complete the online theory portion of each unit prior to attending and practicing the skills on each other in the onsite lab component. This course prepares beginning practitioners to complete a health history as well as a head-to-toe physical assessment. These skills are essential for successful clinical practice.

For more than a century, American schooling has ben conducted in much the same way: The teacher assigns a text for the students to master and then assesses their learning. Known as the "recitation script," this repeated cycle of assign-assess is far from the natural kind of teaching by which societies have been instructing their young since the dawn of time. Contemporary educational reform is now emphasizing the fundamental, natural method of teaching, which is the assisting of learners through the instructional conversation. Newly understood through the principles of socio-historical theory, real teaching is understood as assisting the learner to perform just beyond his or her current capacity. This assistance in the "zone of proximal development" awakens and rouses into life the mental capacities of learners of all ages. This assistance is best provided through the instructional conversation, a dialogue between teacher and learners in which the teacher listens carefully to grasp the students' communicative intent, and tailors the dialogue to meet the emerging understanding of the learners. This pattern of relationship should be characteristic of the communication of the entire school, in which the teachers assist and converse with one another, administrators assist and converse with teachers, and administration provides activity settings in which these instructional conversations can occur. Such a school becomes a true community of learners, in which school reliably assists the performance of all.

In order to respond to learners' need for more flexible speaking opportunities and to overcome the geographical challenge of students spread over the United Kingdom and continental Western Europe, the Open University recently introduced Internet-based, real-time audio conferencing, thus making a groundbreaking move in the distance learning and teaching of languages. Since February 2002, online tutorials for language courses have been offered using Lyceum, an Internet-based audio-graphics conferencing tool developed in house. Our research is based on the first Open University course ever to deliver tutorials solely online, a level 2 German course, and this article considers some of the challenges of implementing online tuition. As a starting point, we present the pedagogical rationale underpinning the virtual learning and teaching environment. Then we examine the process of development and implementation of online tuition in terms of activity design, tutor training, and student support. A number of methodological tools such as logbooks, questionnaires, and observations were used to gather data. The findings of this paper highlight the complexity of the organisational as well as the pedagogical framework that contributes to the effective use of online tuition via audio conferencing systems in a distance education setting.

With more than 4 million students enrolled in online courses in the US alone (Allen & Seaman, 2010), it is now time to inquire into the nature of instructional effort in online environments. Reflecting the community of inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) this paper addresses the following questions: How has instructor teaching presence (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001) traditionally been viewed by researchers? What does productive instructor effort look like in an entire course, not just the main threaded discussion? Results suggest that conventional research approaches, based on quantitative content analysis, fail to account for the majority of teaching presence behaviors and thus may significantly under represent productive online instructional effort.

This article provides a personal perspective about the development of the seminal papers associated with the Community of Inquiry Framework. The framework and its construction are described. The main part of the paper explores the evolution of the framework and its associated methodology. Finally, research associated with the validation of the framework and new research directions are reviewed.

The purpose of this study is to provide conceptual order and a tool for the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computer conferencing in supporting an educational experience. Central to the study introduced here is a model of community inquiry that constitutes three elements essential to an educational transaction-cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Indicators (key words/phrases) for each of the three elements emerged from the analysis of computer-conferencing transcripts. The indicators described represent a template or tool for researchers to analyze written transcripts, as well as a guide to educators for the optimal use of computer conferencing as a medium to facilitate an educational transaction. This research would suggest that computer conferencing has considerable potential to create a community of inquiry for educational purposes

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of an online educational experience through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Transcript analysis of online discussion postings and the Community of Inquiry survey were applied to understand the progression and integration of each of the Community of Inquiry presences. The results indicated significant change in teaching and social presence categories over time. Moreover, survey results yielded significant relationships among teaching presence, cognitive presence and social presence, and students' perceived learning and satisfaction in the course. The findings have important implications theoretically in terms of confirming the framework and practically by identifying the dynamics of each of the presences and their association with perceived learning and satisfaction.

This chapter focuses on the role of the teacher or tutor in an online learning context. It uses the theoretical model developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) that views the creation of an effective online educational community as involving three critical components: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence.

Data compiled via a national survey of 1500 students enrolled or planning to enroll in online education