Despite the increasing numbers of online courses, there have been several concerns and criticisms related to teaching and learning in e-learning. Previous research has suggested that students are often dissatisfied and frustrated with their elearning courses. A more important issue is that e-learning has not led to pedagogical changes. A large percentage of e-learning courses have been develope...

While learner-centered language teaching has been advocated in higher education in recent years, teacher-centered teaching styles may be still dominant in actual practice. Since previous studies have revealed conflicting results on the relations between variables such as gender, degree obtained, and course type, with the perceived teaching styles, this study also examines the correlation betwee...

This paper provides a brief overview of constructivist learning theory and explores its implications for instruction in terms of the design of online learning environments that are learner-centered, knowledgecentered, assessment-centered, and community centered. It then presents a model for organizing thinking about technology-mediated learning within a social constructivist frame. The RCET mod...

Both academic institutions and businesses are exploring a shift from face-to-face instruction to distance learning. However, without the foundation of a systematic instructional design process to guide course development relevant factors might be overlooked. A study conducted with graduate students in the Human Development program at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago was designed to i...

Critical thinking is often considered an essential learning outcome of institutions in higher education. Previous work has proposed three pedagogical strategies to address this goal: more active, student-centered in-class instruction, assessments which contain higher-order cognitive questions, and greater alignment within a classroom (i.e., high agreement of the cognitive level of learning obje...

As computer interfaces emerge as an instructional medium, instructors transitioning from the classroom continue to bear the burden of designing effective instruction. The medium of the computer interface, and the kinds of learning and interactive possibilities it affords, presumably changes the delivery of learner-centered instruction. Strategically, teachers not only need instructional design ...

Effective history instruction often relies on taking historical episodes and making them personally relevant to the learner. One narrative-centered technique for accomplishing this is to tell a story about the historical episode in which significant historical events are witnessed or even, to some small degree, influenced by a fictional character. Given individual differences among users, the a...