The Wisconsin Master Gardener Program team used the Google+ Community platform to provide an engaging online discussion forum for asynchronous continuing education experiences. Applications of such a tool for volunteer online education have numerous benefits, including the capacity for asynchronous posting, ease of posting, privacy options, wide…

Because of an absence of dialogue, a tense relationship appears to exist between Wisconsin's gay men's book discussion groups and their local public libraries. Public library directors express interest in accommodating these groups if approached but face budget restrictions and local communities that may oppose these gatherings; gay men's book…

As K-12 schools acquire equipment for videoconferencing, they often experience limited usage of the equipment. The purpose of this study was to identify specific concerns of educators currently involved in videoconferencing. The primary data for the study was 400 discussion posts from 34 educators in an online class about videoconferencing. Data…

Telephone conferencing can be used to solve communication problems in correspondence education. Technical problems have largely been resolved, and programs like the Educational Telephone Network (ETN) at the University of Wisconsin Extension have effectively used telephones to deliver instruction to remote classrooms. The success of such…

During 2003, the North Dakota University System began to be concerned about the cost of supporting multiple course management systems. Since 1997, the 11 NDUS institutions had used 9 different course management packages, including one homegrown product (HTMLeZ) and such proprietary products as Blackboard, WebCT, and e-College. The University of…

Is tutoring online more than just email? Two yearlong studies explored tutoring online in two different modes. One, from Atlantic Community College in New Jersey, looked at asynchronous (not real time) tutoring online using a discussion board. The other, at Pima Community College in Arizona, used synchronous (real time) online software. The…

THIS PAPER EXAMINES SOME OF THE MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN RESEARCH ON STUDENT-LED SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION TEACHING PROCEDURES. IT FOCUSES UPON PROBLEMS OF CRITERION EXAMINATION, USE OF RATING FORMS TO ASSESS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VARIOUS METHODS OF INSTRUCTION, AND METHODS FOR CHARACTERIZING CLASSROOM PROCEDURE. THIS PAPER…

Citizens of Brown County, Wisconsin participated in planning for Total Resource Development, led by professional extension personnel who oriented study group members to planning purposes and procedures and provided resource information. Data to determine how the planning process met six conditions were obtained from questionnaires, analysis of…

The objective of the study was to determine whether a carefully developed educational television series combined with organized viewing post discussion and specially prepared study materials would have any effect on social attitudes and opinions of participants. Data were obtained from a sample of 360 viewers at 22 posts randomly selected from…

The research project described in this paper was conducted for three purposes: (1) to identify the program evaluation needs of secondary vocational educators in Wisconsin; (2) to identify those components of the state's previous evaluation system that educators wanted to keep; and (3) to develop a conceptual framework for revising Wisconsin's…