As school closures require educators to transition to remote teaching, relevant models for supporting students are necessary. This article discusses Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE), a framework identifying two communities to help support student engagement: (a) the course community associated with course or school (teacher, peers,…

Research suggests that collaborative learning designs, which require interaction with teachers and peers, can promote engagement and learning for online courses. Many K-12 students seek supplemental online courses to meet graduation requirements and desire flexibility, which often conflicts with required interactions. This paper asserts that…

This paper describes the Adolescent Community of Engagement (ACE) framework as a lens to guide research and design in adolescent online learning environments. Several online learning frameworks have emerged from higher education contexts, but these frameworks do not explicitly address the unique student and environmental characteristics of the…

Although K-12 online learning has experienced exceptional growth, research in the area has lagged behind. This dissertation addressed this gap in the literature using a multiple article dissertation format. The first article used survey data from two online English courses at the Open High School of Utah (OHSU) to examine students' reported…