In the last few years there has been a proliferation of asynchronous online discussion forums which have opened up the possibilities for people to exchange ideas at any place and at any time. The literature has documented that asynchronous online discussion has the following desirable characteristics: 1) it may help enhance the participation of students who might be less willing to participate in traditional face-to-face classroom settings due to shyness; and 2) it has the potential to encourage more thoughtful responses since participants can take their own time in composing their thoughts. Nonetheless, despite the promise of asynchronous online discussion to promote rich learning experiences, students do not always make use of its potential. The purpose of this study was to examine how a group of Singapore students interacted with one another, as well as the types of thinking skills, critical or creative thinking, and levels of information processing they exhibited during an asynchronous online discussion. This was an attempt to develop certain guidelines that would help facilitate students' in-depth thinking and promote student-to-student interaction in an online discussion environment.*

This paper reports the results from a survey on the perception of e-learning at the higher level education. The resulting data consists of answers to the questionnaire by a total of 822 respondents including 609 students who were enrolled in either 2 year colleges, 4 year colleges, or graduate schools at the time when the survey was conducted, and 213 academic faculty and staff who hade-learning experience. Main findings are: first, the most preferred instructional material format for e-learning was web-based self-directed instruction (28.1%) by the faculty whereas students preferred discussion (24.6%) and Video on Demand (VOD) (24.1%) .. Secondly, students of e-learning classes studied more on average than the students of face-to-face classes and students with more e-learning experience had a tendency of studying more. Thirdly, students, academic faculty, and staff all reported heavier burdens with online classes than with offline classes, but the perception of increased burdens with online classes relative to offline classes was more widespread among faculty members (44. 7% at twice more burden) than among students (33.5% at twice more burden) .. Fourthly, overall students (56. 7%) are more satisfied with online classes than academic faculty and staff (43.4%). Fifthly, the willingness to participate in online classes by faculty (89. 7%) was higher than that of students (57.8%). Sixthly, as to the online tuition, students (50.3%) claim that less than 50% of the tuition of the offline education is optimal while academic faculty and staff (23.8%) reported 90%.

As students, faculty, and professionals from China and America interact more frequently through face-to-face exchanges and through networking technologies they are more and more aware that cultural assumptions and values affect the ways they communicate and learn from each other. Unstated assumptions regarding individualism, competition, time, and authority tend to differ between American and Chinese cultures. These differences, in turn, have implications for creating effective technology -enhanced distance learning environments. Further research is needed on issues such as whether cultures that put heavy emphasis on the authority of the teacher and predispose learners towards the transmission model of learning, are less favorably disposed to existing distance learning models, and how novel models could meet these challenges.

The purpose of this study was to explore and propose an academic administration and organizational model in order to enhance the educational quality of digital distance universities. This study employed a comprehensive cross analysis of a diverse set of information including literature review, analysis of international distance universities, survey of expert opinions, benchmark analysis of domestic distance education enterprises, and survey of distance universities. The suggested model that evolved shows that distance universities should be equipped with detailed services on both the faculty and staff sides of academic administration, instruction-learning support, student aid, and educational evaluation, and that these services also need support in the form of organization. The model also emphasizes flexibility and dynamism that connects services and organizations and enables timely provision of services and top-level receptiveness.

A successful technology integration practice depends on both individual levels of teaching expertise and the socio-context in which the teacher lives. In this article, the researchers present a case study of an exemplary female teacher using technology integration in the context of an elementary school in China. Multiple sets of data were collected to examine the teacher's exemplary practice, perceived benefits, concerns, and visions about technology integration in Chinese classrooms. Researchers then investigated how the Chinese culture as a contextual factor affects teachers' technology integration practice. The teacher's technology integration experience was significantly modulated by the social context. Policy makers of technology integration should give significant consideration to this underlying factor.

This study was to investigate the impact of cognitive style and self-regulated learning strategy such as note-taking methods on learners ' academic performance. Statistical analysis results showed that both cognitive style and note-taking methods did not have a significant effect on an immediate test. However, there was a significant main effect of cognitive style on a delayed test. Students who took notes in a matrix scored higher on the delayed test than did students who took notes free form. There were no interaction effects between note-taking format and cognitive style in both post-test and delayed test.

This article provides a brief description of the vision and implementation timetable for the iriformation and communication technology (JCT) education policy in Hong Kong. The author examines the effects on teaching and learning of a schoolclosing crisis resulting from the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The findings were that most schools in Hong Kong were still at the elementary stage of using JCT in education. In addition, the author highlights the significant roles of leaders in culture development in schools concluding that the realization of shortfalls is itself a big step forward in making changes.

Among Information Communication Technology (ICT) applications in education, Project-based Learning (PBL) is regarded as an effective intervention in the area of science and technology education. In this article, we present PBL classroom experiments using robot-oriented concepts to motivate students' interests describing what they do in PBL classes, how they create their ideas and products, and how their attitudes toward robot use have changed.

This paper reports the application of Wood's national policy framework (Wood, 2002) to the use of computers in Chinese schools in order to evaluate the impact of and reaction to information and communications technology (ICT) policy on the future of schooling and society. With its highly centralized system of schooling, the "centralized regulation of schooling" scenario is considered to be sufficiently close to enable current ICT policy and possible future developments to be examined. The analysis arising/rom Wood's framework has significant implications for developing countries, such as China, which have limited funding and experience to address the range of issues relating to ICT integration. 81