"The discussion method is one of the most commonly used pedagogical techniques in the online classroom. Discussion is widely used because it can promote several types of thinking-and certain types of thinking especially those characterized as constructivist, are important in education. Proper attention to the design, facilitation, and maintenance of an online instructional discussion is critical to promote students' constructive thinking. Questioning is a significant instructional design element for the promotion of effective discussion. This article describes a theoretical framework for designing questions for starting online discussion and follow-up questions to maintain the discussion. This framework is placed within a broader context of discussion within a constructivist, online environment. Numerous examples of discussion questions which were gathered from experienced online instructors are presented with the goal of preparing students and teachers to participate effectively in online discussions."

is chapter aims to: Give an overview of the various ways student-centred learning is defined, Suggest some ways that student-centred learning can be used as the organising principle of teaching and assessment practices, Explore the effectiveness of student-centred learning and Present some critiques to it as an approach.

In spite of evidence that more and more students are engaging in online learning experiences, details about the transition for teachers and students to a new learning environment are still unconfirmed. While new technologies are often expected to make work easier, they also involve the development of new competencies. This change may, in itself, elicit an emotional response, and, more importantly, emotion may impact the experience of online learning. Knowledge about the impact of emotion on learning broadly is available, but not about emotion and online learning. This study presents evidence of emotions present in online environments, and empirical data which suggests emotional presence may exist as a fundamental element in an online community of inquiry.

Traditionally, emotion and cognition have been viewed as polar opposites and this view has been incorporated into theories of learning. One reason for this may be a lack of clarity in defining emotion. In fact there are other perspectives on how emotion and cognition, emotion and learning, are related. These considerations emerge with renewed vigor with the move to online education. The author interviewed eleven students studying online. These students identified emotions which were critical to their online learning. Evidence from the literature and from the interviews positions emotion as central and essential to the teaching/ learning process.

"Improving the Use of Discussion Boards"

"Mastering Online Discussion Board Facilitation"

Many studies report information overload as one of the main problems that students encounter in online learning via computer-mediated communication. This study aimed to explore the sources of online students' information overload and offer suggestions for increasing students' cognitive resources for learning.

he VOCAL approach summarizes the key characteristics that a master instructor utilizes to be effective in an online environment. VOCAL is an acronym for Visible, Organized, Compassionate, Anal ytical and Leader-by-example.

"We have argued elsewhere (Mishra & Koehler, 2003) that these standards only answer part of the question regarding technology inte- gration. In other words, though these standards tell us what teachers need to know, they often do not tell us how they are supposed to learn it. Most scholars working in this area agree that traditional methods of technology training for teachers--mainly workshops and courses-are ill-suited to produce the "deep understanding" that can assist teachers in becoming intelligent users of technology for pedagogy"