The data indicate that teachers in this study place tremendous value on research skills, with most reporting assigning a research paper to their students in the 2011-2012 academic year and spending class time teaching various research skills to their students. These lessons are aimed at addressing deficits they see in today’s students. Most notable among these is the inability to judge the quality of information, a skill the vast majority of teachers deem “essential” for their students’ future success.

Takentogether,theresultsofthissystematicreviewsuggestthatgamificationcanincreaseengagementinonlineprograms,andenhancerelatedoutcomes,suchaslearningandpossiblyhealthbehaviour.Mostresearchtodatehasevaluatedtheimpactofmultiplegamificationfea-turesusedincombination.Preliminaryevidencesuggeststhatleaderboardsmaybea particu-larlyusefulformofgamificationtoincreaseengagement.It appearsthattheefficacyofgamificationforincreasingengagementmayhavea timeeffect,witha clearpositiveimpactinstudiesconductingactivitiesina singlesitting,withresultsmoremixedforstudiesexamininggamificationandengagementovera sustainedperiod

It is essential to help students develop research abilities in the classroom and through faceted assignments.  What are faceted assignments?  After providing guidance in class, the professor assigns each aspect of a research assignment – development of a research problem statement, location of relevant resources, evaluation of resources, and so on – as its own mini-assignment, which is graded promptly, with sufficient comments to enable students to revise and resubmit.  By the time the final research assignment is complete, it carries the benefit of a significant amount professorial mentoring.

Many of the professors who assign research papers would disagree that they are encouraging students to think conventionally, and point out that the essay has its own limitations. If research papers -- or dissertations, for that matter -- were to become a thing of the past, what would we lose in our pursuit of knowledge? Is there a better way to assess knowledge?

As an English teacher and school librarian, I am passionate about teaching students how to access information, how to evaluate their information and how to correctly source their information when researching.  Here are five of my top tips for helping students write a research paper or complete a research project.

By some measures distance education students are somewhat less prepared (e.g. fewer of them attended private high schools) but still have a better chance of graduating college than students who do not take distance education courses. Put simply, at a national level, even potentially less prepared students who participated in distance education early in their college careers were more likely to attain a degree than students who had not done so.

While scholars have applied the assumptions of andragogy to inform quality online course design, this work proposes that an online course designed using sound pedagogical principles can exhibit a learning experience beneficial to adult learners.

Accordingly, our results strongly suggest thatonlineinstructionin keyintroductorycollege-level courses, at least as currently practiced, maynot be aseffectiveasface-to-faceinstructionat2-yearcommunitycolleges.

In order to inform the development and implementation of effective online learning environments, this study was designed to explore both instructors' and students' online learning experiences while enrolled in various online courses. The study investigated what appeared to both support and hinder participants' online teaching and learning experiences.

Adult learning theories are not just a collection of jargons, concepts, and ideas about how adults learn. These theories help you plan your course during conception, development, and execution, in a way that will facilitate the learning process.

In an interview, he described how these emerging support systems engage students and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, even when they’re not in the classroom. The systems are not an online course, but rather an online tutor, driven by artificial intelligence, that can assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses and deliver personalized individual instruction.

Higher education institutions need to address these challenges, and technological tools — even some surprisingly simple ones — can go a long way toward enhancing the college experience for older students, says Brian Fleming, executive director of the Sandbox ColLABorative at Southern New Hampshire University.

While our program still faces some challenges around engaging our students and keeping them enrolled in programs long enough to complete their goals, technology has allowed us to make some remarkable strides.

We eventually hope to create affect-sensitive learning environments that respond constructively and effectively to boredom and confusion. When we do, we will have made significant progress towards improving students’ learning experiences, reducing problem behaviors such as gaming the system, managing students’ frustration and confusion in the face of impasses, and ultimately improving students’ learning.

Therefore, practitioners need to be cognisant of the important role they play in influenc-ing learner motivation when designing learning activities. Most importantly, the relevance and value of the task (e.g., online discussions) need to be clearly identified and linked to learning objectives to help learners understand how the activity can aid in the realisation of personal goals, aspirations, and interests, both in the short and longer term.

Online learning environments have a promising future for researchers, practitioners, and learners. However designing and developing more effective and efficient online learning environments is possible with ongoing research and development. This paper offers four research goals and matches four existing methodologies to improve student outcomes in online learning environments defined as learner achievement, engagement, and retention.

Technology integration has also been shown to help create more authentic learning environments where the students are more motivated to attend, have a greater chance of communication and collaboration and have more opportunities to use higher order thinking and problem solving skills connected to real world applications (Fouts, 2000) This has led some to believe that new theories in learning needed to be developed that would help to support the creation of such learning environments. The three emerging theories discussed in this paper all possess the ability to support the creation of such learning environments.  They all support the idea that learning is through action.  They all support that cognition happens through communication and collaboration with others.  They all support the use of technology to help in the creation of such learning environments. It is through these new theories that learning environments, which support the development of these higher-level learning skills, can be created.  

Research about adults as learners can inform the design of effective digital learning experiences. Although there is no one principle that can be applied to all adults, the design principles outlined here are based on five of the prevailing theories about how adults learn: andragogy, experiential learning, self-directed learning, transformational learning, and neuroscience.

Faculty need to focus on learning theory in the design of instructional technology so that they can create lessons that are not only technology-effective but that are meaningful from the learner’s standpoint.