Online and distance learning is a practice situated in environments--places, spaces, and times, with particular people, in particular contexts, with particular technologies, within particular institutions. In other words, the practice of online and distance learning is not wholly individual: it is situated within broader environments. In this…

Digital education refers to in-person, blended, and fully online learning efforts, as well as attempts to capture a wide range of teaching and learning contexts which make use of digital technology. While digital education is pervasive in Canada, pan-Canadian data on digital education are relatively scarce. The Canadian Digital Learning Research…

Flexible learning removes barriers relating to time, place, and pace. While time management skills have been identified as necessary for learners to take advantage of flexible learning, relatively little is known about the temporal dimensions of flexible learning and how gender might relate to temporal flexibility and its perceived benefits. To…

The year 2020 was likely one of the most challenging ever for the higher education sector. The pandemic forced massive short-term, and both faculty and administrators needed to adjust to new ways of conducting their day-to-day operations. This project provides a series of three snapshots examining the nature and magnitude of these changes in…

Through analysis of the relationship between neoliberalism, learner subjectivity, and flexible education, this paper examines the freedom said to be enabled by flexible education. It asks: What is the nature of such freedom, who does it make free, and in what ways? While flexible education is often framed to be liberatory in nature, especially…

As digital education at the postsecondary level continues to grow, robust professional development that prepares faculty to teach in online and blended settings is necessary. In this study, we analyzed open-ended comments from the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association's annual survey of Canadian postsecondary institutions (2017-2019) to…

Research on faculty use of technology and online education tends to be cross-sectional, focusing on a snapshot in time. Through a secondary analysis of the annual "Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology" conducted by "Inside Higher Ed" each year from 2013 through 2019, this study investigated changes in faculty attitudes…

The disruption that resulted from COVID-19 in 2020 impacted the ways in which higher education faculty lived and worked. Earlier literature describes how faculty members' experiences during the early months of the pandemic included emotional impacts such as stress and anxiety, with little support to manage these impacts. In this paper we report on…

Prior literature suggests that to address the problems facing education, researchers and practitioners of online and flexible learning should avoid placing too much emphasis on the potential of technology and consult the history and literature of the field. In this reflective article, I argue that in addition to these activities, we should expand…

The Digital Faculty research project builds upon previous studies about faculty use of technology, faculty social media use and communications, and faculty perceptions of the future of higher education. This report focuses on Faculty Social Media Use and Communications. In this report, findings are presented about most commonly used social media…

We describe the benefits and challenges of engaging in public data mining methods and situate our discussion in the context of studies that we have conducted. Practical, methodological, and scholarly benefits include the ability to access large amounts of data, randomize data, conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses, connect educational…

Hashtags offer exciting opportunities for professional development, teaching, and learning. However, their use reflects users' needs and desires. To illustrate and problematize the ways hashtags are used in professional development settings, this study reports on users' participation patterns, users' roles, and content contributed to three unique…

The aim of this investigation was to gain an understanding of the use of institutional social media accounts by graduate departments. This study focused particularly on the social media accounts of instructional design (ID) graduate programs. Content and statistical analyses were conducted to examine 24,948 tweets posted by ID programs (n = 22) on…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and rapid impact on higher education institutions across the world. In this study, we report the findings of a survey investigating the rapid transition to emergency remote teaching in the early weeks of the pandemic at public and private postsecondary institutions in the United States. Participants…

Inspired by open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open source software, the openness movement in education has different meanings for different people. In this study, we use Twitter data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in discourse around openness. By targeting hashtags related to open…