The purposes of this study were to examine students' satisfaction with online learning and identify attributes that contribute to humanizing the online classroom. A total of 228 students participated in the study, which attempted to determine whether students perceived a social presence in the online course as a result of a variety of…

University of Central Oklahoma's Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR) leverages the LMS to assess coursework and co-curricular, informal learning experiences beyond an A-F grade. Students build their STLR Snapshot to show growth in five core employability soft-skill areas and display them in a streamlined way to back up their resume.

Traditionally, online learning has been limited to written lectures, readings, discussions, and assignments with an occasional video presentation or simulation included due to the limitations of technology (Kirkwood & Price, 2013). While this form of learning has served the online environment well, the process does not address individual…

With increased pressures on maintaining a stellar academic performance for future academia or occupational possibilities, students may suffer test anxiety at some point in their higher education journey. For decades, empirical, observational, research has been conducted to determine the psychological and physiological effects of test anxiety. This…

Distance education research literature tends to focus on building economies of scale as a way to improve efficiency and effectiveness. However, the smaller scale distance education operation has a place and there are institutions, such as the one where the current study was set, that, while being keen to improve efficiency and effectiveness…

Online education is continuing to grow in popularity with students with more and more institutions offering fully online degrees. In addition, online education potentially offers a color free environment where students are less likely to be judged by race and treated more equally as this is one of the benefits of online education. However, African…

Textbook prices are continuously rising in higher education. This paper analyzes a business model which makes commercial textbooks more expensive, and explains why this issue tends to be more severe in the field of distance learning in higher education. It reports a case of adoption of open educational resources (OER) textbook for an online course…

With the ever-increasing availability of online education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student retention and faculty personality as it was hypothesized that faculty personality has an effect on student retention. The methodology adopted for this study was quantitative and in two parts 1) using linear regression models to examine the impact or causality of faculty…

This study analyzes nontraditional students' perceptions of online course quality. Students were categorized into three groups: traditional, moderately nontraditional, and highly nontraditional. A survey instrument designed to assess online course quality and other demographic characteristics was administered electronically. Course quality was…

Research was conducted to explore predictors for online higher education student attrition. This research was conducted using results from the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator to track students in their degree programs. In addition, student outreach was conducted with an experimental group of at-risk students to determine if additional…

With the ever-increasing availability of online education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of…

The landscape of higher education has significantly changed. Methods of instructional delivery, student profiles and degree offerings have transformed traditional brick and mortar institutions. Distance educational courses and programs, either fully online or hybrid, have been a major contributing factor in this shift. While a high percentage of…

This is a "best practices" article focused on sharing six new academic scheduling strategies recently employed by the BYU Salt Lake Center to optimize course offerings and increase enrollments. These strategies are generalizable to other academic programs that help extend academic programs at a distance, including online courses. The…

89% of colleges and universities in the United States offer online courses and of those institutions 58% offer degree programs that are completely online (Parker, Lenhart & Moore, 2011).Providing online student services is an important component of these distance programs and is often required by accrediting bodies. Health and wellness…