Background: Although advances in distance learning have shown signs of a reconfiguration of the teacher's role in online environments, a large number of online teaching practices still do not show many signs of this shift. Given the need for a change in pedagogies, investigating how exemplary teachers transfer their thinking, pedagogical…

This dissertation was an in-depth investigation of successful online teaching in the context of higher education. It is presented in nontraditional dissertation format as approved by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Iowa State University. This dissertation includes three publishable journal articles that would represent Chapter 2, 3…

This study explored student-led facilitation strategies used to overcome the challenges of instructor-dominated facilitation, enhance the sense of learning community, and encourage student participation in online discussions. It presents a series of cases of students' facilitation strategies and using qualitative data analysis of discussion…