College of Education

Vision: We develop educational leaders who create tomorrow's opportunities.

Mission: Our mission is to prepare competent and committed professionals who will make positive differences for children, young adults, and others in schools.

ETC777/ETC599 Research in Distance Education

Department of Educational Specialties

General Information

• • • Instructor: Chih-Hsiung Tu, Ph.D.: Email Address: Chih.Tu.@Nau.Edu

    • Office address: PO Box 5774 Flagstaff, AZ 86011Phone: 928-523-0671 Fax: 928-523-1929

    • Office hours: By appointment via e-mail, phone, chat room, or in person

    • Credit hours: 3

Teaching Philosophy

The instructor's philosophy of teaching rests in a firm belief that students learn best when actively engaged in learning activities that are relevant to their current and future professional placement. MORE...

Pre-requisites & Requirements

Because this is an advanced course, knowledge of human learning theories is assumed as is familiarity with technology-based learning environments. Scholarly writing skills and access to peer-reviewed article resources are highly recommended.

Course Descriptions

This course is an advanced class for doctoral students who wish to obtain knowledge of research in distance/open education. It provides an introduction to the theories concerning distance education and an introduction to research in distance education. The focus of the course is on the research and theoretical framework of distance education. The intent of the course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the theories involved in distance/open learning, relevant new/emerging technologies, and preparation of educators to determine rational choices regarding distance/open education research and the learning theories applicable to distance/open education.

Learning Goals & Outcomes

• Critical analysis of published research dealing with distance/open education in terms of the critical issues associated with interactive distance/open learning.

• Critical analysis of the theoretical frameworks currently utilized in distance/open education.

• Develop a comprehensive literature review about distance/open education.

• Identify important research topics in distance/open education.

Communication

E-Mail

We will use your NAU Gmail or your Gmail to communicate with each other.

Discussion Board

The Discussion Board is the place where you will post your reactions to articles, comment on other people's postings, or ask for help from your classmates. Online discussions are required in this class. Students must participate regularly in the discussions.

All students in this course are expected to participate in the online discussions. Regular reading, quality participation, interactive engagement, and posting of contributions to the discussion boards is mandatory throughout each week of the semester. Each student must post at least FOUR messages each week/lesson (8 postings for each module) by following two posting periods. Failure to post these messages every week may result in a grade deduction. Grades for online discussions will be posted regularly to assist students in understanding expectations.

Here are some guidelines for participants for regular posting to online discussions.

• You should complete the activities throughout the workweek/lesson and avoid leaving them until the last day.

• Your posting should be thorough and thoughtful. Just posting agree/disagree with your comment, or I think the same as someone else is not considered an adequate response.

• It should be evident from the postings that participants are reading each other's comments. That is, the participants should make references to each other's points of view.

• Four comments per week/lesson are considered marginal, more are expected. Of course, posting more frequently is certainly encouraged.

• Students should respond to ALL KEY discussion questions posted by the instructors.

• When replying any discussion postings, students need to replace "Subject" field with keywords/tags that reflect/summarize their posting. If not keywords/tags not applied, discussion grades will be deducted.

Required Posting Periods

Rubrics

Team Discussion Moderation (Due to short instructions, we do not integrate team discussion moderation this semester.)

Each team must moderate one or more lessons of the online discussion. Moderation duties include:

• • moderating/facilitating the discussion, ensuring that the focus of the discussion is maintained,

  • and posting a summary of the discussion at the end of the lesson,

  • and evaluating classmates' discussion performances.

Team members will share the moderating responsibility collaboratively and cooperatively. If any, not required, moderators must post their discussion question by Sunday midnight prior to the lesson they moderate. Generally, posting one question is appropriate. Moderation includes the questions posted by the team and the instructor. Check with the instructor for the further instructions.

The points of lesson discussion are assigned to the online moderation. Moderators should focus on their moderating work instead of responding to the discussion questions. Team members should moderate, participate, and facilitate the discussions actively. Failure, or simply refusing, to facilitate may result in grade deductions.

The team moderators are required to evaluate and provide the feedback to the classmates' lesson discussions. The moderators should use Excel to provide the grade and the feedback. The team moderators should self evaluate themselves as well. The final grade for the lesson discussion will combine the moderators' evaluation and the instructor's evaluation. Both moderators' and instructor's evaluations take 50% of the points of each lesson's discussion evaluations.

There are several useful resources that focus on how to moderate an online discussion. Students are advised to read these resources to become acquainted with the process of successful moderation of online discussions.

• Why Collaboration?

• Team Building Guidelines.

• Moderation resources.

• Moderation guidelines

• Group Member Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Assignments

All paper assignments should be written in APA (American Psychological Association) format, double-spaced, including page numbers. Failure to follow the required format may result in point deduction. Assignments may involve various written reports, critiques of articles, research papers, or technical productions (see each assignment for details).

Assignments must be written in a clear and concise English format. Students should follow the length requirements of each assignment. All assignments should be in APA format, doubled-space, font size 12, and pages numbered. Failure to follow the proper format will result in grade deduction. See each assignment for details.

APA is the style to be used for references and bibliography. If different reference styles are required in your professional field please note this in each of your assignments. Those of you in educational fields are required to use APA style.

APA resources

• American Psychological Association. (2002). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

• American Psychological Association. (2003) Electronic Reference. Retrieved October 12, 2003 from http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

Here are some APA examples for your references: Examples. Want to learn to use reference manager application to organize your references? See these two free tools:

Zotero & Mendeley

Course Materials

Required Textbook

• Zawacki-Richter, O. & Anderson, T. (2014). Online distance education: Toward a research agenda. Athabasca University Press. *Free book to download.

• Anderson, T. & Dron, J. (2014). Teaching crowds: Learning & social media. Athabasca University Press. *Free book to download.

  • Veletsianos, G. (2016). Emergence & innovation in digital learning: Foundations & applications. Athabasca University Press. *Free book to download.

• Gregory, S., Lee, M. J. W., Dalgarno, B., & Tynan, B. (2016). Learning in virtual worlds: Research & applications. Athabasca University Press. *Free book to download.

Optional Textbook

Gunawardena, C. N., & McIsaac, M. S. (2003). Distance education. D. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook for research on educational communications and technology (pp. 355-396). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

** No need to purchase this book. If you are an AECT member, you can download the entire book online.

Notes: Many required readings will be given online.

Reading Resources

Reading resources

Course Lesson

Course Structure/Approach

Assessment

Please note: assignments are due on the specified due date unless other arrangements are made with the instructor. In very special cases, the instructor may award an extension if an assignment needs to be redone. If the assignments are not turned in on the due date, they will NOT COUNT toward the course grade.

Evaluations:

Course Policy

Methodology:

This course is VERY labor intensive. Therefore, each student is expected to spend 6-9 hours per week engaged in online participation in class discussions, assignments, and individual projects. There may be many times when you will need to be able to troubleshoot complex problems on your own -- be prepared.

Late Work Policy

The assignments are due on the specified due date unless other arrangements are made with the instructor. If the assignments are not turned in on the due date, they will NOT COUNT toward the course grade.

Extra Credit Policy

Occasionally, extra credit points may be awarded by the instructor for work that is deemed to beyond the normal scope of expectations of assigned work. However, these are distributed at the instructors discretion and not be solicited by the students. In other words, you shouldn't ask if you can do alternative assignments for extra credit.

Grading

NAU and the professional community expect the College of Education to maintain standards that reflect its reputation as a leading school in preparing educational leaders. According to the University's Graduate Catalog,

• A means Superior

• B means Satisfactory

• C means Lowest grade acceptable for graduate credit

In general, professors award "A" grades to acknowledge achievement that goes beyond specified course requirements and criteria. By its very nature, this kind of exemplary performance cannot always be spelled out clearly in advance. "A"s are reserved for special efforts that exceed expectations by demonstrating exceptional creativity, boldness, commitment, ingenuity, or polish, and are available for the highest accomplishments. In sum, if you submit an assignment that only meets the minimum competencies, you should not expect to receive an A in such an assignment.

Participation This reflects the instructor's subjective assessment of the quality and quantity of your online interactions with her/him, and with other class members, both through email, chat, and the bulletin board, and the way that you contribute to the course's learning environment. Risk-taking is encouraged as a means to "push the envelope" of your individual learning.

Incompletes Also from the Graduate Catalog: If you are unable to complete coursework in a scheduled course within the semester in which you are enrolled, you may petition your instructor to receive a grade of "I." If your instructor agrees to give you an Incomplete, you and the instructor must complete a written agreement, a copy of which is held in your department file, indicating the exact work you need to do to finish the course. This written agreement must also indicate the date by which you must complete this work, and that date cannot be longer than one calendar year from the end of the semester in which you were enrolled in that course. By the end of the time agreed to in writing, your instructor must submit a permanent earned grade for the course or the grade remains a permanent Incomplete. As a general rule, please note that there will be NO "Incompletes" given for this course.

Academic Integrity All students will strictly adhere to academic integrity. As noted in the NAU Student Handbook "ACADEMIC INTEGRITY means that students and faculty jointly agree to adhere to a code of conduct appropriate to the mutually trusting relationship that must exist between student and teacher. Those values will not allow either to take credit for work not their own, or to be deceitful in any way, or to take unfair advantage of other students or of each other, or to be other than totally truthful and straightforward in all that they do."

Any allegation of academic dishonesty will be thoroughly invested immediately. For information on the ACADEMIC DISHONESTY policy, please refer to the NAU Student Handbook available at: http://home.nau.edu/studentlife/handbook.asp

For Anadolu University students:

For NAU students:

University Policy Statements Procedure for Course and Instructor Evaluation:

A course evaluation will be made available toward the end of the semester and you will be asked to complete the instrument. Evaluations are anonymous and are submitted to the departmental secretary for coding and tabulation. Results of the evaluation are used to update the content and emphases of the course as contemporary research suggests.

• Policy Statement for Syllabi

• Northern Arizona University Course Policy

• Northern Arizona University Class Management Policy

• On-line course evaluation

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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