Instructional Technology

The establishment of an online community is widely held as the most important prerequisite for successful course completion and depends on an interaction between a peer group and a facilitator. Beaudoin reasoned that online students sometimes engage and learn even when not taking part in online discussions. The context of this study was an online course on web-based education for a Masters degree in computer-integrated education at the University of Pretoria. We used a mixed methodology approach to investigate how online activity and discussion postings relate to learning and course completion. We also investigated how student collaborative behaviour and integration into the community related to success. Although the quantitative indices measured showed highly significant differences between the stratifications of student performance, there were notable exceptions unexplained by the trends. The class harboured a well-functioning online learning
community. We also uncovered the discontent students in the learning community felt for invisible students who were absent without reason from group assignments or who made shallow and insufficient contributions. Student online visibility and participation can take many forms, like read-only participants who skim over or
deliberately harvest others’ discussions. Other students can be highly visible without contributing. Students who anticipate limited access due to poor connectivity, high costs or other reasons can manage their log-in time effectively and gain maximum benefit. Absent and seldom contributing students risk forsaking the benefits of the virtual learning community. High quality contributions rather than quantity builds trust among mature students. We suggest how to avoid read-only-participation:
communicate the required number of online classroom postings; encourage submission of high quality, thoughtful postings; grade discussions and give formative feedback; award individual grades for group projects and rotate members of groups; augment facilitator communication with Internet-independent media to
convey important information. Read-only-participants disrupt the formation of a virtual community of learners and compromise learning.

A wide variety of technology is available to physical educators, health teachers, and coaches—but technology is only helpful if people know how to use it effectively. This text will help health and physical education teachers and coaches improve their abilities by learning to effectively use technology in the areas of instruction, assessment, management, communication, professional development, and advocacy. Practical uses for technology provided in this book can enhance your ability to teach and coach, improve student and athlete performance and assessment, and motivate active and healthy lifestyles.

Technology for Physical Educators, Health Educators, and Coaches is a clearly written, engaging, and practical text that will help teachers and coaches more effectively use technology. Readers will be guided in improving:
· Teaching and coaching effectiveness
· Motivating with technology
· Management efficiency
· Communication with stakeholders
· Concept and skill instruction
· Assistive technology skills with special populations
· Online instructional effectiveness
· Assessment abilities
· Digital video recording and editing skills
· Advocacy skills
· Professional development opportunities, and much more...

This is a highly valuable resource for all physical educators, health instructors, and coaches who want to take full advantage of the available technology to help them improve in their professions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of levels of processing (LOP) and various navigation design types (NDTs) on high school students’ recall and retention performances in e-learning environments. The participants’ (N=90) performances of free recall, title recognition, location memory and their retentions were measured in two different navigational layout design types by giving participants the instructional tasks which were designed in shallow, medium and deep LOP. Results are in accordance with the main argument of LOP; deeply processed elements are remembered better and the strength of the encoded memory trace depends on the mental processes carried out with different types of tasks. Results show that the main effects of LOP and NDT on memory performance are significant.