Teaching Online Courses Research Articles

Videos in Online Courses

Many instructors use videos to support their teaching in online courses to convey course content that would normally be taught in a traditional setting. Prior studies have shown some connection between utilizing online videos and student performance but do not always support their finding statistically or consider the nuance of the online videos, such as if the videos are required and how long the videos are. This article uses various quantitative analysis techniques to investigate the relationship between video length, student video viewing patterns, and grades. The findings indicate that videos should stay within a certain length to encourage student engagement with the videos and course assignments. Also, watching online videos is only positively related to grades when students are not required to watch, a result that is consistent across course-level and student-level models. Student viewing patterns also differ for courses that require watching videos versus those that do not. The article concludes by discussing the relevance of these results and how instructors can best utilize online videos in their courses.

Perspectives on the Barriers to and Needs of Teachers’ Professional Development in the Philippines during COVID-19

Due to COVID-19, remote or distance education has become the norm in the Philippines. Yet even in its second year, remote teaching and learning still face ongoing challenges, as does the need for teachers’ professional development. This paper describes a study that examined teachers’ perspectives on barriers and needs in professional development. The study involved 174 teachers who were teaching online courses in the National Capital Region. The participants completed a survey detailing their professional development frequency, perspectives, barriers, and needs, while eight teachers agreed to participate in a follow-up interview. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analysis have shown that teachers’ pedagogical and information technology skills requirements are influenced primarily by their prior professional development experiences and their need to apply active learning and innovative teaching ideas. Qualitative analyses indicate that teachers’ professional development needs are mostly focused on skills related to online teaching, information technology literacy, and conducting research. In addition, data indicated that barriers to professional development were primarily caused by financial and time constraints and a lack of teacher motivation and logistical support. In summary, for remote education to be sustainable, teachers need ongoing professional development as well as adequate logistical support.

Efficiency of MOOCs in Leveraging Access and Quality Library and Information Science Education in the Era of COVID-19 in Eswatini

Library and information science (LIS) education in Eswatini is not yet grounded. Although several interventions exist to improve the quality of LIS education in Eswatini, there have not been many attempts to systematically adapt and integrate massive open online courses (MOOCs) in LIS education. This article presents strategies that can be used in Eswatini to adapt and integrate MOOCs to enhance the quality of LIS education. These strategies are the first steps toward assisting higher education institutions in Eswatini to utilize the potential of MOOCs to improve the quality of LIS education.

Advantages and disadvantages of motivational and educational online courses

Advantages and disadvantages of motivational and educational online courses

Difference between Online and On-site Mathematics Courses in Higher Education

As a result of the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus, the education system has undergone many changes in order to avoid the spread of the disease. Educational institutions have moved from traditional pedagogy of teaching to the process of online learning. The purpose of this research is to estimate there are differences between learning mathematics online and on-site in Higher Education. To determine if there is a difference between learning math online and on-site, we first analyzed the results of students who have completed the same math course. Then we analyzed the results of students who have successfully completed this course. The students' academic results were measured by the final grade of the exams from the mathematics course, which were provided by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UBT University in Kosovo, where the students of this University were part of this study. This research study makes an important contribution to addressing the question of differences between online and on-site mathematics learning and achievement. The findings revealed that there are small differences between online learning outcomes and on-site. The outcomes demonstrated that online learners performed better than on-site learners in the arithmetic course. The results of this study will offer crucial information to higher education institutions looking to provide top-notch online courses that cater to students' and communities' requirements.

The mechanism of learning effect of online courses in higher-education: An explanation based on the interactive distance theory

"Online courses" avoid the limitation of time and space and effectively integrate educational resources by using internet technology, thus accelerating the development of modern education. The wide use of online courses since the COVID-19 pandemic has made the learning effect of online courses and its influencing factors attract the attention of educators and educational researchers. Based on the Transactional Distance Theory, this paper constructed a model of factors influencing the learning effect of online courses in higher education. We collected sample data of 743 participants in online courses and evaluated the learning effect of online courses through structural equations. The results show that: (1) material content utility and interaction utility of online courses have a significant positive effect on the learning effect and course satisfaction evaluation; further, attention has a mediating effect on the learning effect; (2) Compared with "live broadcast" courses, the effect of material content and interaction on learning effect is stronger in "live broadcast + recording" courses; (3) differences in students' characteristics result in different learning effects. The conclusion of this study provides a theoretical basis for improving the learning effect of online teaching and a reference for formulating targeted incentive strategies based on students’ characteristics.

Understanding and uses of collaborative tools for online courses in higher education

This article describes an action research study investigating the understanding and uses of collaborative tools, which are novel to pedagogical practices -- using the steps of planning, intervening, evaluating the effectiveness, and sharing potential collaborative tools and/or applications. The research focuses on determining the most effective applications for collaborative tools. Based on the study, this article highlights additional key strengths of collaborative teaching scenarios: their strength in facilitating student tasks and assessments. The time savings are quantified after determining how the collaborative task reduces the time required by course facilitators for manual evaluation. This advancement makes it possible to design multiple collaborative tasks that use various collaborative tools, enhancing learning experiences in higher education. The section then discusses potential collaborative tools and/or applications. Effective utilization of collaborative tools necessitates facilitators with the skills to create a new, innovative, collaborative virtual platform.

Research on the Dissemination and Influencing Factors of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Related Courses in Colleges and Universities-Taking MOOC as an Example

The rapid development of information technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet and big data has promoted the deep integration of technology and education, especially the rise of large-scale online courses, which provides a great opportunity for curriculum teaching reform in colleges and universities. At the same time, artificial intelligence, as a cutting-edge technology, has good development prospects and has become a popular professional course in colleges and universities, artificial intelligence technology has become the focus of subject education in many universities. The combination of online education and AI courses will also greatly enhance the enthusiasm of users and expand the dissemination scope of big data and AI related courses. Based on the grounded theory and technology acceptance model, this paper obtains the users’ perception evaluation of learning MOOC big data and artificial intelligence courses through field interviews, summarizes the core categories, constructs MOOC user acceptance model, collects sample data by questionnaire and makes an empirical study. It is found that perceived usefulness, expectation confirmation and primary communication effect have a significant positive impact on the secondary communication effect, and the content quality and socialization interaction indirectly affect the secondary communication effect of MOOC curriculum by affecting the primary communication effect.

Designing Effective Online Courses: Exploring the Relationships Amongst Online Teaching Self-efficacy, Professional Development, Online Teaching Experience, and Reported Implementation of Effective Higher Education Online Course Design Practices

How best to prepare and support higher education faculty to design and teach effective online courses is a topic of great significance to higher education institutional leaders and faculty developers. This study explored how hours of professional development along with online teaching and learning experiences were related to online teaching self-efficacy and the extent to which participants reported implementation of effective online course design practices. Using a non-experimental quantitative correlational explanatory research study design, data were collected using a questionnaire. Participants included 104 online faculty from a large public higher education system located in the upper Midwest that includes both community colleges and universities. The findings suggested that both online teaching self-efficacy and self-reported ratings of implementation of effective online course design practices were higher when individuals have completed at least 20 hours of professional development meant to prepare them to teach online, have experience as an online instructor and/or online learner, and have participated in a peer review of their online course. The findings offer insights into how those with varying levels of online teaching self-efficacy rate their online course design practices and suggest that faculty may not accurately self-assess their course design abilities. The results and implications for those who are planning for and providing professional development meant to prepare faculty to teach online are discussed.

Online Simulations for Teaching Professional Legal Skills

Experiential learning approach in legal education is a global influential trend. Legal clinics is one of the most obvious examples of including experiential learning approach into the educational curriculum for law students. The main educational value of legal clinics is a providing training opportunity for students to apply their legal knowledge and skills in professional simulations like role plays of interviewing, counselling, negotiations, mock trials (first instance hearing) and moot courts (appeal hearing). These type of training programs allow law students to test their ability to client-oriented and problem-solving. The Russian legal clinics community has been actively developing since the mid of 1990s for more than 30 years. More than 100 Law Schools over Russia have own legal clinics. Clinicians overview their experience and share this experience between clinicians community. At the same time only relevantly small part of law students have access to effective training of legal skills because of various reasons, but mostly because of relevantly small number of legal educators who use the experiential-learning approach. Transition of experiential-learning best practices into online format is a good tool of scaling the number of students who could be trained in legal skills significantly. The paper describes the collection of unsupervised online learning modules devoted to legal skills, including case strategy, interviewing, counselling, legal writing and trial skills. These unsupervised online learning modules are developed based on modern instructional approaches to developing of online educational courses. The piloting of the unsupervised online learning modules demonstrates that these modules might be used as a supplementary educational tool and as a part of main educational curriculum for law students.

External Factors Explaining Students’ Persistence in Online Courses in Higher Education: A Study Among Two French-Speaking Universities in Canada

The aim of this study was to verify if external factors influence persistence in online courses in higher education. These external factors, borrowed from Kember’s (1995) model, included some students’ characteristics; cost benefits; social integration of adult students (enrolment encouragement, study encouragement, and family support); and external attribution (insufficient time, events hindering study, and distractions). Data were collected among a sample of 835 students from two Canadian French-Speaking Universities (n1 = 468 from University One and n2 = 367 from University Two) using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included items borrowed from The Distance Education Student Progress (DESP) inventory (Kember et al., 1992). The multiple linear hierarchical regression analysis revealed that students’ characteristics and some of the external factors had an effect on students’ persistence in online courses and that the most important factor in predicting students’ persistence is cost benefits. These analyses were also conducted by university, gender, and age groups. Except for cost benefits, the results indicated different patterns of strength and significant relationships between groups.

Designing Online Educational Russian Language Courses in Finland

When switching to online teaching, the question arises about the feasibility, methods and form of transposing existing teaching materials into the Internet and creating new ones. The aim of the study is to show what opportunities electronic educational environment ViLLE, developed in Finland, has for teaching Russian as a foreign language and as a second home language. The material of the article include exercises created in this e-environment, and the methods of the research include various software and pedagogical solutions aimed at implementing the methodology. During research, starting in 2017, e-learning platform ViLLE has allowed the Russian language to find and to take its place in Finlands digital language teaching system. Different courses were created, with different sets of tasks and exercises that can be used by teachers and students of any educational institution. Some of the courses, among them those aimed at bilinguals, provide an opportunity to familiarize students with the included theoretical material. Having mastered the necessary minimum skills of using ViLLE, any teacher can independently modify tasks and exercises, combine them in the desired sequence and volume, and thus create courses adapted to the needs of their students. An integrated performance analysis system makes their work easier by allowing the teacher to focus on a specific language teaching problem. The results showed that among the existing electronic educational resources, online platforms and e-learning environments are the most essential tools for teaching a foreign/second language, since only they give the teacher the opportunity to independently plan and structure the entire educational process, manage it, use existing materials and create new ones, automatize certain functions, combine various educational events, and communicate with students. The article compares criteria for evaluating such resources and dividing them into two categories: (1) general criteria that include multi-functionality, the set of features provided by the environment, and compatibility with regard to encoding and format of training materials and other system components; (2) those considering needs of specific teachers and students and their resources, namely, resource administrating, creating tasks and courses, managing and monitoring the learning process. The future plans concern carrying out extensive monitoring of the effectiveness of the system in school and university teaching.

Middle School Physics Experiment Teaching Within “Internet Plus”: From the Status Quo to Implications

Middle school physics experiment is a significant basic course with extensive content and strong practicability. This course has high requirements for students to master and understand the background and basic principles of various physical experiments, as well as the working principles and the use of various experimental devices. Based on the importance of physics experiment teaching and the limitations of the traditional experiment teaching mode, this paper first reviews the traditional mode in the context of the Internet and puts forward the new physics experiment teaching mode within "Internet Plus" in the new era, including theoretical guidance of constructing the experimental teaching mode, the innovation of teaching methods and examination methods, and the prospect of promoting the development of education industry. At the same time, this paper puts forward the network teaching platform system that can implement the new physics experiment teaching, including exercises, flipped classroom, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), and discusses them separately, hoping to provide research reference for middle school physics teaching and research in the future.

Reflecting on Best Practices for Online Learning in a Post-COVID-19 World

When the novel coronavirus 2019 caused many schools to immediately go online in March 2020, many instructors had significant training and experience teaching residentially but little to no experience teaching online courses. All classes were immediately converted to online, and some schools are still uncertain as to when they will return to full traditional classroom settings. Regardless of online experience, all instructors were needed to learn to adapt to online teaching immediately. This change created a need for all faculty members to receive the training and support necessary to make the online process as smooth and effective as possible. In this Best Practices perspective, we identified useful and successful practices to help students learn in the online courses. With the knowledge of data driven support and awareness of effective online teaching strategies, instructors can make the most of online teaching sessions.

The effect of generic medicines e-learning course via Web 2.0 tools on knowledge of pharmacists and pharmacy students

Background: Research scoping on e-learning and novel web 2.0 tools in pharmacy education in Arabic Language Speaking Countries (ALSCs) is scarce. Aim and methods: Therefore, this study aimed to develop an online educational course on generic medicines to reveal the views of Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students about emerging technologies in transferring pharmaceutical knowledge and assess the differences in knowledge scores before and after the online educational intervention and the differences in knowledge scores among study subgroups. Results: The total mean knowledge score after attending the online educational intervention significantly increased, from 4.9±1.68 to 7.75±1.75 (t(86) = 4.6, p<0.001). Providing an online course using web 2.0 tools to transfer pharmaceutical knowledge was viewed as highly positive (mean score = 62.23±6.08, range 45-75 points). Significant sex and status differences were identified post-assessment. Female participants and pharmacists had higher knowledge scores compared with males and students, respectively. Conclusion: The online course development was successfully implemented using Schoology as an online learning management system (LMS) and Facebook as a social network site (SNS). Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students found e-learning and web 2.0 tools to be effective novel technologies in transferring pharmaceutical knowledge.

Faculty Engagement in Online Education: Applying the Perceived Characteristics of Innovation to Explain Online Teaching Intention

There exists an increasing demand for online education; however, faculty may question the value of online courses as they grapple with making a connection between the face-to-face classroom and the online learning experience. Much research has focused on factors relating to student engagement, although we posit that faculty engagement represents an important aspect in the online learning context that has been fairly overlooked in the engagement research stream. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence a faculty’s intention to teach an OL course in addition to their level of engagement in teaching an online learning course is vital to the growth and success of an OL program. Therefore, in this study, we seek to not only understand the factors that influence faculty’s intention to teach online learning courses but also an instructor’s level of faculty engagement in online learning courses. We sought a novel lens with which to examine this phenomenon, so this study utilizes the perceived characteristics of innovation (PCI) to examine the relationships between faculty engagement and intention to teach online learning courses. We conducted a survey of 99 instructors from a large public university in order to assess the impact of PCI on faculty engagement and intention to teach online courses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the data, concluding that result demonstration, relative advantage, and compatibility influence a faculty’s level of engagement in an online learning course, which in turn influences their intention to teach an OL course. We discuss how this research can be utilized in order to more effectively allocate scarce resources by focusing on the relative advantage of online learning, the measurability of online learning, and the way in which it can be compatible with instructors teaching preferences. We present this study to enable the beginning of a new stream of research into faculty engagement.

Using Online Photovoice (OPV) to Understand Youths’ Perceptions of Distance Education during COVID-19

In this study we aimed to investigate young college students’ experienced problems and support resources regarding online or distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used an innovative technique, Online Photovoice (OPV) method to collect data. The research includes the theoretical framework created to understand the factors that facilitate and complicate online/distance education processes for prospective teachers in the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the framework consisted of Ecological Systems Theory (EST), Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), and OPV. In the analysis of the data, we used Online Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (OIPA). The study sample consisted of 153 young university students in three universities in the south and southeast of Turkey. The data collection tool was created as an online form consisting of four parts: introduction, general information, and consent form; questions on the most important facilitator and the most important barrier in your life for your online/distance education during the COVID-19 process using OPV; and demographic questions section. When the facilitating factors obtained from the study data were examined, 11 main themes emerged. These main themes were having online or distance education (37%), technology, computer, internet, and helpful course programs (30%), and private space (10%). On the other hand, 16 complicating main themes have emerged including insufficient technology (32%), problems with online education (15%), and financial issues (12%). The participants attributed facilitators and barriers to EST levels, respectively: individual/intrapsychic factors (47%, 43%), microsystem (19%, 48%), exosystem (36%, 37%), and macrosystem (26%, 34%).

“Everyone is new to this”: Student reflections on different aspects of online learning

In 2020, many instructors and students at colleges and universities were thrust into an unprecedented situation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. Even though they typically engage in in-person teaching and learning in brick and mortar classrooms, remote instruction was the only possibility. Many instructors at our institution who had to switch from in-person to remote instruction without any notice earlier in the year worked extremely hard to design and teach online courses to support their students during the second half of 2020. Since different instructors chose different pedagogical approaches for remote instruction, students taking multiple remote classes simultaneously experienced a variety of instructional strategies. We present an analysis of students' perceptions of remote learning in their lecture-based, active learning, and lab physics classes at a large research university in the USA, focusing on positive and negative aspects including collaboration, communication, and assessment. Student reflections emphasized the importance of grade incentives for out-of-class and in-class work; frequent, low-stakes assessments; community-building activities; and opportunities to study with peers. Reflecting on the challenges and successes of different types of remote instructional approaches from students' perspective could provide useful insight to guide the design of future online courses as well as some aspects of in-person courses.

Accessibility of Virtual Instruction in Higher Education: Challenges Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed. It prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Institutions of higher education are included under Title III of the ADA, and as such are required to provide the same access to services and education to qualified individuals with disabilities as individuals without. A review of the literature of accessibility of online programs and courses in higher education shows that compliance to the ADA is sporadic due to several challenges. In Spring 2020, all institutions of higher education transitioned to some form of online instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This created even more challenges in complying to the law. This paper reviews the challenges to compliance to the ADA in online courses both in normal operations and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers recommendations and resources for improving compliance.

A Method of Recommending Physical Education Network Course Resources Based on Machine Learning Algorithms

Aiming at the problem of difficult selection of physical education online course resources, a method of recommending online course resources based on machine learning algorithms is proposed. The information recommendation model is established through the expression of a collaborative filtering algorithm and resource feedback matrix. According to the feedback score of any user on the same data resource in the project set, the interest matching degree is established by comparative analysis, and the matching degree is substituted into the cosine similarity function to calculate the similarity threshold between each item and so on, calculate the similarity threshold number of all items, select the project resource that best matches the user according to the threshold number, and complete the recommendation. The experimental results show that the recommended method of physical education network curriculum resources based on machine learning algorithm is relatively excellent in recommendation accuracy and efficiency; this method can realize the innovation of higher physical education network curriculum teaching mode.