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**Below is a summary of my progress on the lit review with the information on the articles I have found so far at the bottom:**

1. Mangalaraj, G., Singh, A. & Taneja, A. (year?). Bolstering teaching through online tools. Journal of Management Information Systems, 21(3), pages?. This article stresses the importance of interactivity when using web-based tools for education. Students are accustomed to a high degree of capability coming from a generation of facebook and myspace users, therefore they expect the same from their online learning tools. This usually requires the use of web 2.0 technology. On the other hand, schools in higher education work under tight budgets and providing these tools can be expensive. This paper presents a list of low-cost tools that can be used to enhance student online learning. The tools listed are further categorized by utility and classified as either open source or commercial.

Staging tools are the foundation of the system. They are the structure needed in order to manage content. They consist of learning management systems and course management systems. Course delivery tools provide for the delivery of course content and enhanced communication (both synchronous and asynchronous) among students and teachers in various forms. These tools include videos, podcasts, newsfeeds (RSS) and screen capture. Course collaboration tools facilitate collaboration between students. Examples are blogs, wikis, collaborative document management tools. Interactive tools like web conferencing and web based simulations promote interactive communication between the instructor, students, and groups. Assessment tools evaluate the progress of student learning. These include testing tools, cheating prevention tools, and plagiarism detection tools.

This article also addresses the security, ethical and privacy issues that may arise in using web based tools for education. For instance, instructors and students should be careful not to infringe upon copyright rules and proper citation of sources should occur. When using open source or commercial source technology student and teacher privacy issues should always be considered before putting videos, discussions and documents on the internet. Instructors should give special consideration when publishing student information such as grades and contact information. In addition, educators should be careful not to violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act or any university policy when placing student information on the web.

2. Graves, L., (2008, May). A second life for higher ed: A virtual world offers new opportunities for teaching. //U.S. News & World Report.// Volume? pages?-or should we use internet reference format?

This article is about using Second Life, an online tool where students and instructors create a three dimensional world where they interact as assumed characters known as avatars. The goal is to create an online environment where students interact just as they would in a face-to-face classroom environment. Many schools around the world are using this technology to create interactive environments known as ‘islands’ for students and teachers from different global regions to meet and conduct class. Some instructors conduct office hours using this technology as well. The cost is about $1000 per island and is used by such prestigious universities as Harvard and Princeton.

The advantages of this technology is increased interaction and real-time communication for distance learning. On the other hand, there is a learning curve associated with using this technology and it may be viewed as more playful than productive by some. Students must learn to get around the island by teleporting and how to manage their avatars before they can concentrate on the course content. There are also challenges with effective communication using emoticons. The effect can be unexpected so that the resulting communication is skewed. For instance, a student may want to look happy but the avatar actually looks upset. Some professors feel that this learning environment is clearly inferior to the face-to-face classroom environment because of the communication issues.

3. Berryhill, A., Durrington, E. & Swafford, A. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190-193.

This article addresses the increasing demand for online courses. It points out that students prefer face-to-face courses that they are familiar with, however, their lifestyles only afford them to take online distance courses in order to complete their educational goals. In addition, due to the increasing demand of this type of educational availability, teachers are required to teach courses and create content in a context in which they are unfamiliar. Teachers may view online courses as being less effective than traditional classroom instruction. Research demonstrates that this is not the case. The effectiveness of online classroom education can be just as effective as face-to-face classroom teaching if the technology is appropriate, immediate feedback is provided and if there is a high degree of interactivity.

The online learning environment should be supportive by providing a detailed syllabus with the expectations clearly outlined and deadlines established well in advance. This way students will be better able to integrate their educational tasks into their busy lives. The online teaching environment should be open, providing discussion and assignment forums that are both synchronous and asynchronous. To enhance interactivity, the expectations for online postings should be clearly outlined to reduce ambiguity around the participation expectation. Exchanges should involve both student to student interaction and interactions between instructor and students. Student moderator discussions are encouraged. Student interactivity can also be increased with a problem based learning approach where groups of students work as a team to solve a problem that is course content related. The online learning classroom should be supportive, open and respectful for all participants.

4. 1. Bruns, A. & Duffy, P. (2006). The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. //Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006,// August, 31-38.

This article emphasizes the importance of exploring collaborative tools for online learning rather than simply using the internet to deliver content for educational courses. Specifically addressed is the use of blogs, wikis and RSS feeds for educational purposes. The article provides the advantages and potential uses for each of these internet tools.

Blogs provide an easy way to create new pages by simply filling out a form and submitting it to the blogger. Content can be filtered by date, category, and author. Permissions to participate are easily managed and content can be edited. Personal writing space is available that can be easily shared and is archived automatically. The archival feature of a blog can provide students a digital portfolio of their work. Blogs can extend into a content management system like that of a wiki and can be linked to other discussions. Blogs are writings of one person that is read by many and can be powerful tools for collaboration among teachers and for student interaction for educational purposes.

Wikis are websites that allow a user to add content that can be edited by another person. Wiki content in the form of web pages can be created without the use of sophisticated web languages such as HTML. Ideas can be expressed and the relationships between pages can be explored for collaboration creating a network of information on a topic and/or related topics. The history of changes to the wiki can be tracked so the user or for instance a teacher can explore the evolution of the wiki. Content in a wiki can be cross linked to other topics and provide a forum for knowledge to be networked and moderated by the wiki participants. Wikis are most useful for creating documents that are developed and evolve over time. They allow users, students and teachers to comment on a project as it progresses rather than only being able to collaborate on the final document or intermittent drafts.

RSS feeds create computer-to-computer communication and allow for ease in distributing online content in the form of a newsreader. Professors and students can stay up to date on all of the websites that they want to monitor from one location. This creates increased efficiency in relation to both time and content management. It provides a solution to spam since users do not need to provide their email addresses. Teachers can better manage student assignments by subscribing to an RSS feed that allows them to be notified when their students add new content to a course relevant website. In turn, students can better manage the feedback and updates from professors and peers. Students and teachers no longer have to pull down information from several websites, they can now have the information automatically pushed to them.

5. 1. Hawkridge, D. & Wheeler, M. (2010). Tutoring at a distance, online tutoring and tutoring in second life. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, n1? No pg #?.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">This article addresses the question of whether or not tutoring and best practices can be transferred via distance learning since tutoring environments do not resemble the usual virtual learning environment such as Blackboard. These authors specifically address the second life application for tutoring where students are tutored in a virtual environment where they take on an identity in the form of a virtual character called an avatar. The article cites some research done in the late 1970’s at the UK Open University (OU) where correspondence courses have been almost exclusively offered since the early 1970’s. They found that students valued tutoring at a distance more highly than face-to-face tutorials. Students would send their papers via mail to tutors and anticipate their comments on a returned graded assignment. One must be careful about generalizing this result since the OU made assignments mandatory and tutoring optional. In addition, the OU conducted almost all tutoring at a distance.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">In 1993 OU began offering tutoring via computer conferencing and email then in 1997 they offered tutoring exclusively online and removed the option for face-to-face tutoring. Computer conferencing was well received at first. Students posted their answers to intermittent class assignments online and discussed/compared their answers with their peers. The novelty of this soon wore off however and the number of students participating in the discussions dropped significantly.The discussions that did take place more often took the form of social networking posts. Email, on the other hand, became the primary tool for communication and collaboration among students and tutors. As the online tutoring demand increased there were several studies conducted regarding the effectiveness of online tutoring for both students and tutors and several researchers developed models for tutors to follow to increase their success with students in this arena.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">At present, with the development of social networking and virtual environments, these tools are on the increase for distance learning. The use of second life for distance tutoring purposes can be and is used for problem-based learning, group discussion, and design team work. There exists little research for comparing other types of learning to distance learning in the context of this discussion, however, the Media Zoo at the University of Leicester may eventually provide the data needed. The Media Zoo exists in three forms; physical, internet and virtual. This learning laboratory was developed assist staff members of the University of Leicester to understand the applications of different learning technologies. The article then goes on to provide a table of the advantages and disadvantages of the second life application for tutoring. The table below is taken directly from the article (advantages are listed on the left with the disadvantages on the right).

6. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal;"> Pan, X., Shen, R. & Wang, M. (2008). Increasing interactivity in blended classrooms through a cutting-edge mobile learning system. British Journal of Education Technology, 39(6), 1073-1086.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">This article is about a system developed to increase interactivity in the lacking educational systems in China for the distance learning process. The system was developed at Shanghai Jiaotong University and was created for mobile phone delivery devices. The system includes both a mobile phone broadcasting sub-system and a classroom management sub-system. The instructors carry out classroom teaching either using power point applications or applications that allow them to write on the computer screen and the system supports feeds to both students and instructor that display live classroom views. The instructor station also includes a feature that displays student feedback, questions and comments received via text or SMS. The instructor can respond in kind or by writing on the computer screen. The authors then provide further technical detail about how the system functions. One interesting feature is that quizzes and polls can be taken and the results displayed in real-time to both students and instructors. The instructors can receive feedback from students about things such as pace and clarity of instruction and make adjustments immediately during class.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">For the study, a groups of students participated in an interactive English using the afore mentioned system along with other professionals outside the school. This was a unique opportunity for the students to interact with each other and the instructor during the class. A study of the system showed that many students were unwilling to participate in this type of class again (using cell phones and PDAs) because of their unfamiliarity with these tools. On the other hand, this type of classroom delivery seemed to energize the student body. The students expressed that they liked feeling connected with other students and professionals outside the classroom and they liked being able to interact during class. In addition, while students had minimal participation via text and SMS during class many more of them did participate in the online forum discussions. Keep in mind that schools in China are often surrounded by walls and students often have very little contact with the outside world. The study of this particular class also showed that the students in the classroom were much more likely to participate in the quizzes and activities for bonus points submitted via their mobile phone devices than general classroom polls. After the class ended, surveys of the students found that 67% of the students were somewhat satisﬁed [496], 25% were satisﬁed [187]and 5% were very satisﬁed [40]. Of the 17 that were not satisfied with the class the top reason was that they felt they were physically too far from the instructor and the other students to effectively communicate.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> 7. Marilyn, D., Mabrito, M., & Worley, R. (2001). Facilitating interactivity in an online business writing course. Business Communication Quarterly, 64(3), 81-86.

<span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">This article addresses the proposed accreditation guidelines for evaluating online courses drafted by several accreditation bodies in the United States. It is clear that simply loading content on a website will not meet these guidelines. Online courses will be required to foster interactivity in order for students to receive the same quality of education as traditional brick and mortar classroom courses. The article points out that interactivity can be defined as navigational, functional, and adaptive (Guay 1995-this is a reference in the article not a reference we have access too-how do we handle this?). These authors speak about their experience in conducting an online business writing course.

<span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The course included both synchronous and asynchronous class discussion. The asynchronous discussion was carried out through a discussion board. This provided a low risk environment for students to participate in discussions. Furthermore, the discussions could be reviewed and were organized by topic via the discussion thread. The discussion board promotes discussion among students and extends the education experience beyond what occurs in the virtual classroom. Synchronous discussion in the class took place in a virtual conference area of the class website. This provided for more focused discussions pertinent to the class syllabus. An evaluation system was created to evaluate student participation in the discussion. The student participation score was based on three criteria: idea development, interaction level and critical thinking skills.

<span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">To promote collaboration, the online course website incorporated a script where students could submit a URL with a description that was then added to the course website via the script. Students could share their papers this way and were able to access documents simultaneously for editing. This provided for immediate feedback on projects while the students were still required to complete the edits to their papers individually. This provided for some real-world experience in collaborating with others to improve their work and accepting critical feedback.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">8. Moore, M. (2007). Web 2.0: Does it really matter? American Journal of Distance Education. 21(4), 177-183. <span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">This is a brief editorial about how technology has evolved and how it may impact education. The web 2.0 technology developed in recent years has greatly increased the ability for groups of individuals to collaborate on projects, co-author from all areas of the globe and create content in text, audio or video formats. Documents, pictures and videos can be collected in a variety of ways on the internet using such programs as Flickr, wikis, blogs, Facebook, and many other resources. This creates a vast collection of resources that individuals can comment about and build upon. Even more amazing is the Second Life application where students and instructors can meet in a virtual world. They can nearly simulate real-life face-to-face interaction complete with emotional expression and body language.

<span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">This technology revolution is also producing students with a vast variety of new skills not obtained from traditional sources of information like textbooks and instructor lectures. These skills include multi-tasking and filtering information from a wide variety of sources. In addition students familiar with the new technologies have a unique creative skill in reformatting information from many sources into a format suited to their own purpose.

<span style="color: #0000ff; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The author proposes several advantages of web 2.0 technology over web 1.0 technology. This includes making collaboration knowledge sharing more popular among students and eventually with their instructors especially with the further development of social networking tools. Intelligent search engines may eventually, though far in the future, offer prescriptions for learning. Virtual learning environments also provide a foundation for greater risk-taking among students which is one of the foundations for learning. The author has doubts about the increase in quality of education that web 2.0 will have concerning the education arena in North America since course design funds tend to be weighted more heavily on course content rather than designing the web-based course to increase interactivity.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 28px;">9. Falloon, G. (2007). Making the Connection: Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance and Its Relevance to the Use of a Virtual Classroom in Postgraduate Online Teacher Education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(3), 187-209.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">This article focuses on the use of synchronous communication tools and their impact on Moore’s elements of learner autonomy in post-graduate online teacher education courses. The communication tool they used was Adobe Connect virtual classroom (VC). Synchronous communication is thought to increase interaction and motivation among students in an online distance learning (ODL) environment simply due its ability to more readily support two-way communication. Moore posits that the transactions that occur between teacher and student in an ODL needs to address three components: dialogue, structure and learner autonomy [ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">need to cite secondary source here <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Moore, 1997)--- <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> //Reference info from article//: Moore, M. (1997).Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (pp. 22–38). New York: Routledge.). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of the virtual classroom and the impact of synchronous communication on their sense of transactional distance. The four areas of focus in line with Moore’s theory of transactional distance were relationship formation, knowledge development, engagement and information communication.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The data collected in this study was collected through interviews consistent with case study methodology. The study had 30 participants and each was interviewed twice during the course of two semesters for a total of four interviews each. The data indicated that the virtual classroom did in fact foster relationships between students. There were 42 positive comments related to this among the total of 79 responses with 19 negative responses and 18 neutral responses. The data also indicated support for knowledge development with a total of 28 positive responses. On the other hand, there were a significant number of neutral responses (24) and indications were that these students felt like passive participants because of unfamiliarity with the rules for engagement in the virtual environment. There were also 13 negative responses to the knowledge development inquiry indicating that the virtual environment prevented some from interacting in order to increase their knowledge in the course.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Overall, the results for information communication was positive with 9 students indicating they thought the virtual classroom increased information communication efficiency and 8 students indicating that they could share information with greater freedom without the risk of feeling inferior to other students. There were 25 positive responses, 11 neutral responses and 8 negative responses to this aspect of the study. Regarding the results for engagement, there were 22 positive responses, 23 neutral responses and 21 negative responses. The main issues around the negative responses had to do with technical issues and lack of organization for the first semester class. Some students suggested that the agenda be distributed ahead of time so they can conduct some preliminary research in order to be in a better position to ask pertinent questions.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> 10. Duffy, T., Padmanabhan <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">, P. & Wise, A (2009). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Connecting online learners with diverse local practices: the design of effective common reference points for conversation. Distance Education, 30(3), 317-338.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">This article is about a study that examined the effects of different tools and how they affected the quality of online conversations in online learning environments. Often, online learners have a lack of shared context since they are often geographically dispersed and they lack familiarity with the local culture of the other students. Shared context helps facilitate interpretations and meaning in any conversation and presents a unique challenge in creating meaningful and rich conversations in online learning environments.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The goal of this study was to examine the effects of video, theoretical descriptions and metaphors on online conversations in a distance learning environment. It examined the outcomes of conversations. The context of the study was to focus on the application of learning theory for student teachers. They found no significant differences overall with the quality of conversations given the different reference point types of video and theoretical descriptions. On the other hand, since videos were theorized as being least effective and theoretical descriptions being theorized as moderately effective, they found that both were equally effective. Furthermore, the videos and theoretical descriptions were found to be equally as effective as metaphors in individuals with a high degree of detail-focus. The original hypothesis was that metaphors would be overall most effective. An unexpected result also occurred with the metaphors. Some of them were interpreted differently than planned. This leads to the conclusion that metaphors may need additional framing for these situations.

**Chose among articles Dr. Cho sent:** Online teaching with IT: “Bostering Teaching through Online Tools” by Singh, Mangalaraj, and Taneja **Found from sources in above article and will be reviewing to use for our paper:** “A Second Life for Higher Ed by L. Graves. (available online through U.S. News and World Report) [] “Strategies for Enhancing Student Interactivity in an Online Environment” by Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford. (available through ERIC in College Teaching Journal) [] <span style="color: #0000ff; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12pt;">New 5/17/11 in light blue: <span style="color: #0000ff; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12pt;">“The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities” by Peter Duffy and Axel Bruns (conference paper Queensland University of Technology) **Found through ERIC:** **<span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; padding: 0in;"> by Hawkridge and Wheeler. (available through EIRC in European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning) ** [] “Increasing interactivity in blended classrooms through a cutting-edge mobile learning system” by Ruimin Shen, Minjuan Wang and Xiaoyan Pan. (available through academic source premiere) [] “Facilitating interactivity in an Online Business writing Course” by Mark Mabrito (available through Business Source Premiere) [] New 5/16-17/11: “Web 2.0: Does It Really Matter?” Author? (found through Academic Source Premiere using search words does+it+really+matter AND virtual) [] “Making the Connection: Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance and Its Relevance to the Use of a Virtual Classroom in Postgraduate Online Teacher Education” by Garry Falloon (found through Eric, Journal of Research on Technology in Education) [] “Connecting online learners with diverse local practices: the design of effective common reference points for conversation” by Alyssa Friend Wise, Poornima Padmanabhan, and Thomas M. Duffy (found through ErIc in Distance Education – journal?) []