Virtual Reality Pedagogical Considerations in Learning Environments

New virtual reality (VR) educational applications are available in the electronic marketplace almost daily but seldom include pedagogies, materials, recommendations, or insights for adapting or implementing the applications into existing curriculums. Educators need to understand the pedagogical orientations of VR applications to prepare, apply, assess, and evaluate a potentially productive practice that distinguishes and supports different strategies and optimizes student-centered learning. VR educational applications are most frequently built on student-centered models including direct instruction, experiential, discovery, situated cognition, and constructivism pedagogies.

Indicators for Cooperative, Online-Based Learning and Their Role in Quality Management of Online Learning

Learning is a constructive and social process that works best in interaction with others. From this perspective, interaction and cooperation are seen as essential for learning especially in online-based learning environments. The objective of this chapter is to propose and test indicators for cooperative online-based learning. The indicators focus on three areas: presence of participants (indicators: access index, access pattern index), participation of participants (reading index, contribution index, completion index), and interaction of participants (answer contribution index, connectivity index, reciprocity index). The indicators can be applied both to students and instructors. The indicators were applied to three online-based courses in higher education. Log data from the learning management system was used. Also, success rates, student evaluations, and workload analysis were conducted. Results show that the indicators can be calculated automatically and can provide meaningful information for students' and instructors' dashboards. The presented indicators are tailored to cooperative online-based learning environments, where interaction and cooperation are means of fostering higher levels of learning.

Principles and Practices for Enhanced Visual Design in Virtual Learning Environments

The widespread adoption of learning management systems (LMS) in higher education has been promoted as a means of modernizing learning material, improving learning outcomes, and enhancing student engagement, but has often fallen short of these goals. It has been suggested that investment in visual design has the potential to ensure the promise of LMS can be realized. Through the reflections of instructors, a learning designer, and students, this chapter explores the relationship between LMS aesthetics and usability and student engagement. It proposes visual design principles and practices which highlight the combined contribution of functional utility, visual identity, aesthetic appeal, and transactional access to enhancing student engagement and user experience in a virtual learning environment.

A Framework for Effective Online Professional Development

This chapter presents a research-based framework for effective online professional development for in-service teachers. Changes in technology allow teachers to engage in different forms of professional development delivery, including online. In order to affect a change in teacher classroom behaviors, online professional development needs to be on par with effective face-to-face professional development. This study uses archival data from the Ohio Performance Assessment Pilot Project in which teachers engaged in either face-to-face or online professional development that was aligned to six characteristics of effective professional development (workshops, outside experts, time, duration, activities, and content). The results of this study found there is no statistically significant difference in student learning outcomes when teachers engaged in comparably designed face-to-face or online professional development. This framework serves as a guide for institutions of higher education as they continue to design and implement professional development through coursework and training.

Fostering Social Presence on Virtual Learning Teams

Social presence is a key factor in student satisfaction and success in online courses and a marker for whether one has an online learning experience that is engaged, vibrant, and connected, or simply perfunctory. An action-oriented research project was conducted to determine how to foster social presence on the virtual learning teams in the Master of Arts programs in the School of Education and Technology at Royal Roads University. The study findings show that in order to support the development of social presence, the commitment and participation of multiple stakeholders is required. The results of this study suggest a common organizational understanding of social presence, clear delineation of student and faculty roles and responsibilities in its development, intentional program design, and a learning management system that specifically lends to interpersonal relationship building must all be present in order to foster the development of social presence.

Use of Dynamic Web Technologies in Collaborative Problem-Solving Method at Community Colleges

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the design and development process of online collaborative learning environments for community college courses. Within this purpose, design issues of the learning environment are based on a collaborative problem-solving method. In other words, this learning environment is designed according to constructivist learning principles. In this chapter, constructivism, constructivism and technology, collaborative problem-solving method, and dynamic web technologies will be explained. Following that, research findings about the effect of collaborative problem-solving method and dynamic web technologies on educational output of students will be discussed. Next, the design and development of this learning environment will be presented. Finally, implementation issues and recommendations about this environment will be explained.

Scaffolding Problem-Solving and Instructional Design Processes

Instructional design is an applied field of study that involves considerations for complex problem solving and authentic learning. Instructional guidance and scaffolding is particularly critical in facilitating online instructional design students, thus helping them succeed. In this chapter, the authors share how they designed and facilitated three instructional activities in three courses to scaffold a student-centered learning environment online. Using a case study approach, the authors describe their design considerations and how the instructor made decisions to incorporate external representations as a unique instructional technique into the three courses. Through student self-reporting, the instructor's formative and summative evaluation, and the authors' close review of drafts, the design process resulted in final products that were refined and noticeably improved. The authors conclude the chapter by reiterating the importance of scaffolding the problem-solving process with external representations and provide recommendations for future researchers and practitioners.

Designing and Implementing a Student-Centered Online Graduate Program

This chapter presents a case study analysis of a graduate program that moved from initial design to effective implementation of student-centered online instruction. The authors describe their experiences designing, implementing, and evaluating an online M.Ed. degree program in a college of education—the first fully online degree program at a large, Midwestern, regional institution of higher learning. The design and approval process took almost four years, including both internal and external approvals. Initially implemented in 2011, the authors gathered three years of follow-up data about the program and evaluated its success using a variety of factors, including course- and program-level data. Program design, development, implementation, and evaluation are all addressed in this case study.

Understanding Emotional Analytics for Student Engagement

Online instruction in institutions of higher education (IHEs) is growing at an unprecedented rate, which makes student engagement an increasingly important research topic. Emotion plays an important role in student engagement because it can affect motivation, self-regulation, and academic achievement of students, especially in an e-learning environment. Measuring emotions has limitations and presents challenges because people display little change in their emotions while they are learning. The purpose of this chapter is to place in perspective the status of research relative to understanding emotional analytics as they influence the engagement of students in online learning involving visual displays, and the importance of effective visual presentation of learning contents. Central to this goal is a focus on techniques for measuring students' emotions.