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Spring 2006 - Volume IX, Number I

Building an Evaluation Plan for Fully Online Degree Programs

Online degree programs are continuing to gain popularity among institutions of higher education as indicated by U.S. News who recently listed 263 accredited online graduate degree programs on its Web site (U. S. News and World Report, U.S. News Online, n.d.) As the access afforded by distance education increases the number of students served, educational institutions must develop processes that ensure quality in their programs (Schott, Chernish, Dooley, & Lindner, 2003).  This paper describes the research undertaken to develop an evaluation plan for a fully online graduate degree program... 

Faculty, Copyright Law and Online Course Materials

Copyright and fair use laws that regulate educational materials seem to be fairly well understood by the U.S. courts and educators for use in face-to-face (f2f) classrooms (Post and Trempus, 1998). Ever-changing revisions to these laws blur the distinction between tangible and intangible materials shared with students in f2f, online and hybrid courses and must be decided on a case by case basis...

The Relationship of Bandwidth, Interation and
Performance in Online Classes: A Study

Although it is often assumed that the larger the bandwidth of the connection to the Internet, the better, few studies have actually been conducted to investigate the impact of various bandwidth connections on student performance in online courses. The goals of this study were to compare student online behaviors under different bandwidth connections and investigate whether the type of course might be related to the impact of bandwidth for the behaviors...

A Quality Assurance Framework for Recruiting, Training (and Retaining) Virtual Adjunct Faculty

The paper commences with a brief summary of the literature on the quality assurance process in e-Learning in higher education. This is followed by an overview of the U21Global quality assurance framework. Within this framework there is particular emphasis on the process governing the appointment (and re-appointment) of adjunct faculty; a process that incorporates four discrete steps: (i) recruitment; (ii) training and accreditation; (iii) supervision and mentoring; and (iv) reflection and performance appraisal...

Re-Conceptualizing Intimacy
and Distance in Instructional Models

The idea that distance education lacks intimacy and is therefore inferior is based on an embedded metaphor that sustains a restricted and limiting mental model of ideal instruction. The authors analyze alternative conceptualizations of intimacy, space, and place as factors in the development of effective instructional models...

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