Computer system is useful for improving real time and interactive distance education activities. Especially in the case that a large number of students participate in one distance lecture together and every student uses their own computer to share teaching materials or control discussions over the virtual classrooms. The problem is that within this type of education environment the students nee...

Traditional forms of assessment used in face-toface and distance learning education are insufficient to ascertain the learning progress of student and therefore do not provide enough information to detect student learning gaps and improve learning. Another point is that traditional assessment ways rarely involve the student in monitoring his or her own learning through his metacognitive abiliti...

Distance learning is the fastest growing segment of postsecondary education. Almost 3 million students took at least one online course in fall 2005, an increase of more than 800,000 over the previous year (Allen and Seaman 2006). At the same time, questions persist about the quality of online learning. In one recent study, about two-fifths of senior academic officers at U.S. degree-granting hig...

Dental education strives to balance the use of traditional teaching methods with technologically advanced systems to meet the needs of an ever-expanding curriculum. Establishing distance education technologies is an identified goal of dental education. Technologically adept students desire meaningful and efficient distance education instruction. A majority of preclinical instruction is devoted ...

Numerous articles and documents have been written about the management of distance education. The International Centre for Distance Learning (ICDL) Distance Education Library and the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) alone contain hundreds of such documents. Most of these documents, however, examine distance education policy, institution management, student support systems and stu...

With the rise of the situated cognition paradigm in cognitive science, cognitive apprenticeship has become increasingly prominent as a model of instruction. This paper critically reviews traditional approaches to learning and education to motivate the need for fresh ways of thinking about these topics. Cognitive apprenticeship as an approach to improving learning and education is described. We ...