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This chapter suggests that traditional views of gender and other social categories existing in a face-to-face environment are reproduced and even exacerbated online (Allen, 2000; Barak, 2005; Bell & de La Rue, 1995; Cooper, Safir, & Rosenmann, 2006; Hargittai, 2008; McGerty, 2000; Soukup, 1999; Sussman & Tyson, 2000). Further, characteristics of the online environment such as anonymity, acceptability, and aloneness allow for the perpetuation of prejudicial attitudes and accompanying misbehavior. This chapter will focus on the characteristics of the online environment that perpetuate misbehavior, especially with regard to harassment based on social demographic categories. In addition, this chapter will explore how social and experiential learning theories can help us understand the increased propensity of misbehavior online and will suggest how universities and organizations can use these principles to decrease misbehavior.

The chapter aims to evaluate the efficacy of stakeholder participation in the solid waste management system of Mauritius in view of providing a possible mechanism to attain the goals of a sustainable waste management framework.

The study employs qualitative indicators, namely, User Inclusivity and Producer Inclusivity of the Wasteaware Benchmark Indicators. Secondary data are used to conduct a critical and comprehensive analysis of the sub-indicators falling under each of the two main indicators to determine the overall compliance level with respect to stakeholder engagement of the waste management sector of Mauritius.

The results of the study show a LOW/MEDIUM compliance level for both User Inclusivity and Provider Inclusivity indicators, which indicates that improvement is required in the stakeholder engagement mechanism in Mauritius. The main weaknesses identified comprise of lack of an adequate legal framework with clear definition of waste types with regards to segregation, especially for non-hazardous wastes, low efficiency of sustainable waste management awareness campaigns and lack of inclusion of the informal sector. The main strengths identified consist of a proper bidding mechanism in place and a good level of equity in the provision of waste management services with respect to comingled waste collection. Suggested improvement areas include a revamping of the existing legal framework related to waste management to cater for higher inclusivity of all stakeholders together with including sustainable waste management topics in the formal education curriculum.

The User Inclusivity and Producer Inclusivity indicators were previously applied only to cities to measure the level of stakeholder participation, but this study has demonstrated that these indicators can also be adopted on a nation-wide level to evaluate stakeholder engagement. The use of these indicators together with secondary data presents a less time-consuming method to assess stakeholder participation in the waste sector, which can be particularly useful for Small Island Developing States.

The literature on non-traditional classroom environments claims that the changed emphasis in higher education teaching from the lecturer to students has intensified the global focus on student-centred learning, prompting colleges and universities globally to introspect, re-examine, and re-structure their pedagogical approaches in an attempt to align with national educational policies, and to position themselves favourably with potential students in an increasingly competitive higher education environment. This is an environment that now relies heavily on digital learning technologies, which has provoked scholars such as Heick (2012) to perceive the change to the virtual as one that makes higher education institutions accessible from anywhere – in the cloud, at home, in the workplace, or restaurant. The COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the need for this flexibility. These forces have put universities and colleges under pressure to implement new teaching approaches in non-traditional classroom settings that are appropriate for, and responsive to, the COVID-19 crisis and students in terms of learning and social support. This chapter identified and appraised key teaching approaches. It is evident that there are three key teaching approaches that higher education institutions have adopted for delivering learning in an emergency and in a student-centred fashion. The three approaches, which include the time and place dispersion, transactional distance, and collaborative learning approaches, embrace social support because they are grounded in social constructivism. Academics need to be fully committed to the role of social support giving – that is, emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support – in order to foster student wellbeing and cognitive development as students learn together but apart in non-traditional classrooms. The hurried manner in which teaching and learning practices in many higher education institutions have been moved to the online format has led academics to violate many key principles of the approaches they have adopted. And this situation is borne out in the case study discussed in Chapter 8 of this volume. A review of current remote teaching and learning practices is required if academics are to embrace the full principles of the approaches that are appropriate for teaching and learning in non-traditional classroom contexts.

Online learning is becoming increasingly popular in the K-12 school systems for various reasons. This learning platform can provide education to students from various corners of our nation through the use of the Internet and, more importantly, can be accessed through the use of various technologies. As the needs of our schools continue to change and the implementation of online learning continues to develop due to necessity or as an alternate method of educating K-12 students, the awareness of academic freedom that can become challenged or blurred needs special attention. This chapter encourages school systems, administrators, instructors, and online participants to grow more aware of the potential downfalls in this type of learning environment which could likely infringe upon the academic freedom of all participants (both the instructor and students) in online learning environments. This chapter focuses on three topics: the structure of online courses that can impede academic freedom, the impact of language and expression on academic freedom in the online environment, and how the use of technology in online classrooms could potentially encumber the academic freedom of participants. Further, this chapter discusses the importance of being cognizant of the possible academic freedom that can become infringed upon when developing and teaching online courses and ways to avoid these potential problems in the K-12 online classroom.

This chapter explores issues of quality teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education courses from the perspective of teaching fully online (polysynchronous) courses in undergraduate and graduate programs in education at a technology university in Ontario, Canada. Online courses offer unique opportunities to capitalize on students’ and professors’ digital capabilities gained in out-of-school learning and apply them to an in-school, technology-enabled learning environment. The critical and reflective arguments in this paper are informed by theories of online learning and research on active learning pedagogies.

Digital technologies have opened new spaces for higher education which should be dedicated to creating high-quality learning environments and high-quality assessment. Moving a course online does not guarantee that students will be able to meet the course outcomes more readily, however, or that they will necessarily understand key concepts more easily than previously in the physically copresent course environments. All students in higher education need opportunities to seek, critique, and construct knowledge together and then transfer newly-acquired skills from their coursework to the worlds of work, service, and life. The emergence of new online learning spaces helps us to reexamine present higher education pedagogies in very deliberate ways to continue to maintain or to improve the quality of student learning in higher education.

In this chapter, active learning in fully online learning spaces is the broad theme through which teaching, learning, and assessment strategies are reconsidered. The key elements of our theoretical framework for active learning include (1) deliberate pedagogies to establish the online classroom environment; (2) student ownership of learning activities; and (3) high-quality assessment strategies.

Recent research on immersive experiences in online environments for higher education has attributed a fundamental role to two distinct yet connected psychological phenomena: the feelings of being virtually present in the education environment, often simply called presence, and peak episodes of flow. The authors conceptually delimitate these two psychological facets of e-learners’ experiences and examine their interplay. The authors show how flow episodes are elicited by students’ sense of control over the online education environment, their attention being focussed on the learning tasks, and their feelings of being physically placed in the online education setting. Also, the interactivity created by the online education environment evokes an e-learner’s imagery, which in turn triggers presence feelings and episodes of flow. The authors further show that, although presence and flow are triggered by some common antecedents, they differ in the object of the individual’s immersion, and that presence feelings facilitate flow. Moreover, the authors provide practical recommendations for higher education institutions, policy makers and the academic and information and communication technology community involved in e-learning, to make sure e-learner experiences reach their fullest potential.

This chapter discusses a bottom-up design strategy to support the principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning adapted for online course development. The concept of Universal Design demands a holistic, bottom-up instructional design model for online course development that integrates technology, accessibility, recent instructional and learning theories, and a participatory postmodern worldview. This study is intended for faculty, instructional designers, administrators, assistive technology staff, and Web multimedia software vendors associated with higher education. The research assists these target audiences to design and develop online courses that are accessible without special adaptation or modification. The components of Universal Design for online learning support newer emergent approaches to instructional design, various programming solutions used in the software engineering field for efficiency, Universal Design for Learning, and legal guidelines associated with accessibility.

Online learning continues to grow year after year and majority of the growth is seen in public institutions of higher education. The purpose of this book chapter is to acquaint the readers to group-based learning in an online environment as an innovative practice for engaged learning. Diverse facets of group-based learning are discussed such as role of instructors, role of learners, challenges of group-based learning and finally role of social media in designing such group-based learning projects. A comprehensive prototype application of a group-based learning project walks the readers through applying group-based learning in their respective courses at the undergraduate and/or graduate level. Finally some instructor designed rubrics for assessing group-based learning are shared for effective assessment of a group-based learning project.

This chapter highlights our survey that identifies faculty recommendations for incorporating emerging digital technologies to deliver eLearning content in online courses that help students learn more effectively. Results from the survey, which includes a sample of 478 online faculty at two higher education institutions, are presented.

In the findings of the survey, respondents identified several instructional technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and artificial intelligence (AI) as being on the cusp of changing learner engagement options and could soon become standard tools for the online course environment. While respondents predict an acceleration of new technology activity, they also caution that these technologies need a strong pedagogical foundation to match student needs and generate new use-learning real case scenarios.

This sentiment implies a more systematic approach to problem-solving that follows a process of identifying and refining multiple options to determine best practices for faculty preparation and staff development. The results of the survey included in this chapter are a directional means to help instructors and course designers explain what is relevant and exciting about techniques that can be employed and identify and use the emerging technological tools that enhance the delivery of instruction while meeting the ever-changing and dynamic needs of today’s learners.

This chapter presents data from research studies specifically aimed at gathering the perspectives of K-12 students who are taking online courses for credit recovery, their virtual school teachers, and face-to-face school support professionals.

This research employed ethnographic techniques to explore the benefits and challenges of online learning as a strategy for credit recovery.

Our research explores several key findings. The data suggest that the benefits and challenges of online learning for students are one in the same. With proper orientation, individualized support, and purposeful structuring of online programs, online and blended learning as a potential solution for credit recovery students, potentially decreasing the number of future high school dropouts.

This chapter suggests a need to look more carefully at orientation, support, and structuring procedures for online credit recovery.

This chapter is very valuable as a tool for thinking about credit recovery online. It also provides valuable insight into credit recovery from the perspectives of students who are doing the online courses.