Research Methods

NSF- User-Friendly Handbook for Mixed Method Evaluations:
http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/REC/pubs/NSF97-153/start.htm

 ISWorld’s “Qualitative Research on Information Systems:”
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/index.html  

IS World’s “Survey Research in IS:”
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~newsted/surveys.html  

Management Information Systems Research:
http://www.brint.com/papers/misbibl.htm  

Ron Rice’s bibliography on statistics and research methods useful for studying new media:
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~rrice/stats.htm  

Judith Wilde and Suzanne Sockey, EVALUATION HANDBOOK:
http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/miscpubs/eacwest/evalhbk.htm

Bill Trochini's (Cornell) Center for Social Research Methods, a website is for people involved in applied social research and evaluation.
http://trochim.cornell.edu/

FIPSE Evaluation Bibliography
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/FIPSE/biblio.html

Evaluation of Online Courses

The Web of Asynchronous Learning Networks home page:
http://www.aln.org    

ERIC is the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) At its Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation site, you can find "links to some of the best full-text books, reports, journal articles, newsletter articles and papers on the Internet that address educational measurement, evaluation and learning theory."
http://ericae.net/ftlib.htm    

Flashlight: Helping You Analyze and Improve Educational Uses of Technology (charges fees)
http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/flashlight.html

U of Illinois Online Resources:
http://illinois.online.uillinois.edu/IONresources/evaluation/index.html

Research Reports from "CTER," an online Master of Education Degree in Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform offered by the U. of Illinois Online
http://cter.ed.uiuc.edu/about_CTER/morecter.html 

Shadish, William (1998). Some Evaluation Questions. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 6(3). Available online:   
http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=6&n=3  

The “No significant difference” phenomenon:
http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference//   

Educational Resources Information Center:
http://www.eric.ed.gov/

(Canadian) TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence:
http://www.telelearn.ca/

Assessment Report Available from National Academy of Sciences The Committee on the Foundations of Assessment was established by the National Academy of Sciences to address the critical need for "new kinds of educational assessments that better serve the goals of equity." Their report "Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment" was released in pre-publication form and can be ordered from the NAS website
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10019.html?onpi_topnews#040401

Links to Educational Research Methods Resources
http://www.teleport.com/~skerlin/edresearchmethods.html

Educational Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
(On online description and order form for a good text on educational research methods)
http://vig.abacon.com/product/0,2371,0205266592,00.html

Resources for Faculty Teaching Online:  

ONLINE COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: This web site was developed by Central Queensland University in Australian and is "devoted to world's best practice in online collaborative learning in higher education, and related topics: here you'll find links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information."
http://musgrave.cqu.edu.au/clp/clpsite/index.htm  

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)is a continuously growing collection of online learning materials and support resources that help faculty enhance their online courses.
http://www.merlot.org  

Learning to Teach On-Line (LETTOL): LeTTOL is for teachers, lecturers, trainers, materials developers, and academic or technical managers. It provides an opportunity for participants to gain an understanding of how on-line learning works
http://www.sheffcol.ac.uk/lettol/  

New Jersey Virtual U’s Faculty Center:
http://www.njvu.org/njvu/njvufac.html  

Usable Web - Many links to resources for creating user friendly websites:
http://www.usableweb.com/  

Illinois Online Network’s “Resources,” including especially, “Instructional Design for Online Courses:”
http://illinois.online.uillinois.edu/IONresources/index.html  

Research Instruments

Sample Focus Group Topic Guide (for teachers who had participated in a teaching enhancement workshop)
http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/REC/pubs/NSF97-153/C3APP_C.HTM

Online Journals

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks
http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/jaln.htm

Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR)
http://www.aace.org/pubs/jilr/default.htm

Journal of Interactive Media in Education[On-Line]
http://www-jime.open.ac.uk

Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (JCMC) (occassional special issues and frequent articles on CMC and education)
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/

The Technology Source (ISSN 1532-0030), a peer-reviewed bimonthly periodical published by the School of Education, UNC-Chapel Hill, is to provide thoughtful, illuminating articles that will assist educators as they face the challenge of integrating information technology tools into teaching and into managing educational organizations.
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/

The Online Journal of Distance Education Administration
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/jmain11.html

Funding Sources

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Learning Outside the Classroom: The    Sloan program in asynchronous learning, Anytime, Anywhere, Online
http://www.sloan-c.org/  

FIPSE:
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/FIPSE/

Learning Theories and Educational Research

Suggested Readings

Martin Ryder, "an engineer trapped in a teacher's mind," has put together a remarkably comprehensive gathering of categorized links about learning theories. We especially recommend these two pages to begin exploration. For theoretical resources for Psychology and Learning, see:
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/theory.html  

Celebrities in Cognitive Science: Authors. In this section, Ryder highlights his pick of celebrity cognitive scientists.
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/cogsci.html  

The Theory Into Practice (TIP) database was assembled by Greg Kearsley. TIP is "a tool intended to make learning and instructional theory more accessible to educators. The database contains brief summaries of 50 major theories of learning and instruction. These theories can also be accessed by learning domains and concepts."
http://tip.psychology.org  

The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education at the University of Michigan develops theories and practices for learner-centered technology and curriculum. For a complete list of papers see:
http://kidsideas.org/investigationstation/hiceinformation/papers/index.html  

We highly recommend this online paper: Learning Theory in Practice: Case Studies of Learner-Centered Design by Elliot Soloway et al.
http://kidsideas.org/investigationstation/hiceinformation/papers/learning_the ory/index.html  

Brigham Young University's Instructional Psychology & Technology program has a virtual learning library. At this site, you can find important links to learning theory and research (learning theories), measurement and evaluation, instructional design and education topics.
http://www.byu.edu/ipt/vlibrary/learning/index.html  

Community Learning Network of the Open School (Open Learning Agency) in Vancouver, British Columbia has assembled a page on Learning Theory. "Proponents of information technologies in education speak of assisting student-centered learning through technology's ability to access, store, manipulate and analyze information, thereby enabling learners to spend less time gathering information and more time reflecting on its meaning."
http://www.cln.org/inservice/itpd/pedagog.html  

At Funderstanding, a site devoted to helping corporations make better products for children's learning, they have put together an overview of the main Learning Theories: Constructivism, Behaviorism, Piaget's, Developmental Theory, Neuroscience, Brain-Based Learning, Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, Right Brain/Left Brain Thinking, Communities of Practice, Control Theory, Observational Learning, and Vygotsky and Social Cognition.
http://www.funderstanding.com/about_learning.cfm  

Carolyn D. Jacobson has used an online mindmapping tool to describe learning theories visually. This is an excellent method of visualizing the connections among the theories from Jacobson's lens. While many of the websites linked belong to others, we recommend the innovative way that she has organized the information.
http://carolyn.jlcarroll.net/WebSiteMap.htm  

The JSU Encyclopedia of Psychology has a section called, Paradigms and Theories. This database is worth a visit at
http://www.psychology.org  

We especially recommend this page on cognition:
http://www.psychology.org/links/Paradigms_and_Theories/Cognition/  

Call For Papers - 36th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, 2003, "mini-tracks" on Technology Mediated Learning and Asynchronous Learning Networks.

The 8th Sloan-Consortium International Conference Online Learning: Emerging Standards of Excellence in Asynchronous Learning Networks will be held on November 8-10, 2002 in Orlando, Florida.
http://dce.ucf.edu/aln/

Frontiers in Education 2002- Boston November 6-9
http://www.wpi.edu/News/Conf/FIE2002/

36th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, 2003
( Includes "mini-tracks" on Technology Mediated Learning and Asynchronous Learning Networks)
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu

CSCL 2003 (Norway)
http://www.intermedia.uib.no/cscl2003/

Ray Schroeder, University of Illinois at Springfield has created Web Log ("blog" for dealing with online learning)
http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/onlinelearning/blogger.html

Distance-Educator.com The site provides a daily newsfeed of distance education and online learning headlines, resource and book listings, feature articles, feature sites, research reports,and more.
http://www.distance-educator.com/

Other

A moderated and highly  structured discussion about the drivers and designs for the next generation of On-line Learning Systems.
http://www.aln.org/alnweb/alntalk/index.htm