The pervasive nature of online learning worldwide necessitates the creation, administration, and improvement of quality assurance mechanisms for higher education institutions. This article delineates a number of principles regarding features of high quality online learning systems and principles related to assessment of student learning, teacher…

High schools sought to meet the demands of physical distancing and movement restrictions due to COVID-19. Given this unexpected situation, the researcher designed a quasi-experimental ex-post facto study to compare student outcomes from the Pennsylvania Keystone Examinations for Biology and Literature delivered in face-to-face (F2F) and virtual…

Online learning in higher education continues to grow due to the flexibility it offers learners. Adult learners choose online learning at a rate much higher than residential learning. Adult learners in the online environment tend to be retained at a lower rate. To counteract lower retention rates, understanding student needs through targeted…

This study evaluated the effect of online instruction on the academic achievement of K--12 students in ten states as measured by the percentage of proficient students in reading and mathematics at the school level. We used publicly available data provided by the Department of Education in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania,…

With the amount of data available through an online homework system about students' study habits, it stands to reason that such systems can be used to identify likely student outcomes. A study was conducted to see how student usage of an online chemistry homework system (OWL) correlated with student success in a general chemistry course. Online…

Pennsylvania's first cyber charter school opened in 1998, enrolling 44 full-time students. From this modest beginning, Pennsylvania's cyber charter sector has grown to 16 schools enrolling 35,000 students from all but one school district in the Commonwealth. Pennsylvania has one of the nation's most extensive cyber charter sectors, and six…

Online learning has steadily become a more integral strategy for schools and districts in their efforts to offer students greater access to the courses they need. Where in the past, much of the online learning activity happened at the state level or regional level, more and more schools are exercising greater control over their online and digital…

Online charter schools are one key subset of the K-12 online education landscape, which also includes state virtual schools, district-level online programs, private providers of both individual courses and entire schools, and others. As of late 2010, online and blended charter schools existed in more than 20 states, serving more than 100,000…

With hundreds of K-12 schools routinely offering online courses, the idea of a full-time virtual school is no longer as outlandish as it once may have seemed. Thanks to giant improvements in technology and the quality of their academic instruction, most virtual schools now hold a trump card they had not possessed: credibility. "There were…

Virtual learning is not for every student, but it's not science fiction, either. Right now in Michigan, it's being used by thousands of students in hundreds of virtual courses in urban, rural and suburban school districts. In fact, Michigan has been seen as a national leader in virtual learning. This study analyzes the financial costs and academic…

Most educators, parents, and policymakers think of "online learning" as a subset of distance learning (where the students and teacher are geographically separate), in which content delivery and communication are achieved primarily through the use of computers connected by the Internet. However, online learning can be either distance…

Web-based instruction in higher education has grown exponentially, with more than a thousand universities offering courses over the Web in the United States alone. Web-based instruction offers obvious advantages for distance and continuing education populations by making access to education at any time or place feasible. This kind of flexibility…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…