Suchergebnisse

AbstractIt is vital for online educators to know whether the strategies they use help students gain twenty-first-century skills like creativity. Unfortunately, very little research exists on this topic. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine whether participation in online courses can help students develop creativity using asynchronous online discussions, textbooks, and teacher developed materials. A case-study approach was used and one professor, recognized by her peers for her expertise in online education, and three of her students were interviewed. Asynchronous online discussions (29) were also collected and analyzed using a sequential process of building an explanation, checking the explanation against the data, and repeating the process. Key results from the study indicated that project-based prompts, problem-based prompts, and heuristics used in asynchronous online discussions can help promote creativity. Future research should explore a more diverse group of participants and academic subject areas.

This article describes educational research methodologies being used in the investigation and evaluation of desktop virtual world environments (DVWEs) as used to teach a variety of subjects in higher education. Ellis' research framework on innovations (2005) and Reeves and Hedberg's research goals (2003) were used as lenses to examine the state of educational research methods within DVWEs. An extensive search that resulted in 127 peer-reviewed papers chosen, was carried out to locate journal articles in the fields of educational technology, computer science and information systems, virtual reality/virtual worlds/gaming, science and health education, human-computer interaction, media and communications, psychology, social science, cognitive science, and library science. Results showed that while small scale research is common, research with broader goals (i.e. program evaluation, developmental research) is lacking.Implications include the need for signature developmental researchers to make their virtual world applications open source, and for DVWE researchers to explore collaborative research opportunities with postmodern, education researchers in order to shed more light on important issues of equity, gender, politics, and culture that impact education.

This article describes educational research methodologies being used in the investigation and evaluation of desktop virtual world environments (DVWEs) as used to teach a variety of subjects in higher education. Ellis' research framework on innovations (2005) and Reeves and Hedberg's research goals (2003) were used as lenses to examine the state of educational research methods within DVWEs. An extensive search that resulted in 127 peer-reviewed papers chosen, was carried out to locate journal articles in the fields of educational technology, computer science and information systems, virtual reality/virtual worlds/gaming, science and health education, human-computer interaction, media and communications, psychology, social science, cognitive science, and library science. Results showed that while small scale research is common, research with broader goals (i.e. program evaluation, developmental research) is lacking. Implications include the need for signature developmental researchers to make their virtual world applications open source, and for DVWE researchers to explore collaborative research opportunities with postmodern, education researchers in order to shed more light on important issues of equity, gender, politics, and culture that impact education.