Viewing Volcanoes

Mervyn J. Wighting

Science Scope Vol. 28, No. 6 (March 2005) pp. 54–56

When Mount St. Helens threatened to erupt again in 2004, it grabbed headlines and captured the imagination of the country. Science classrooms nationwide used the event as an opportunity to make real-world connections to Earth science concepts...

Effects of Computer Use on High School Students' Sense of Community

Mervyn J. Wighting

Journal of Educational Research Vol. 99, No. 6 (2006) pp. 371–379

The author used a mixed-method design to determine whether and how use of computers in the classroom affects sense of learning in a community among high school students (N = 181). The results indicate that using computers in the classroom positively ...

Feelings of alienation and community among higher education students in a virtual classroom

Alfred P. Rovai; Mervyn J. Wighting

Internet and Higher Education Vol. 8, No. 2 (2005) pp. 97–110

Although the professional literature identifies feelings of alienation and low sense of community as factors that help explain relatively low student persistence rates in distance education programs, no studies have attempted to investigate the...

Language: English

The Latest in Handheld Microscopes

Mervyn J. Wighting; Robert A. Lucking; Edwin P. Christmann

Science Scope Vol. 6 (March 2004) pp. 58–61

Around 1590, Zacharias Jansenn of Holland invented the microscope. Jansenn, an eyeglass maker by trade, experimented with lenses and discovered that things appeared closer with combinations of lenses. Over the past 400 years, several refinements to...

School Climate: Sense of Classroom and School Communities in Online and On-Campus Higher Education Courses

Alfred P. Rovai; Mervyn J. Wighting; Jing Liu

Quarterly Review of Distance Education Vol. 6, No. 4 (2005) pp. 361–374

Multivariate statistical analyses were used to determine if there were differences in sense of community and perceived learning between university students enrolled in fully online and fully face-to-face on-campus courses (N = 279). Study results...

Distinguishing Sense of Community and Motivation Characteristics between Online and Traditional College Students

Mervyn J. Wighting; Jing Liu; Alfred P. Rovai

Quarterly Review of Distance Education Vol. 9, No. 3 (2008) pp. 285–295

Discriminant analysis was used to determine whether classifications could be made between students enrolled in e-learning and in face-to-face university courses (N = 353) based on their scores from separate instruments measuring sense of community...

The Classroom and School Community Inventory: Development, refinement, and validation of a self-report measure for educational research

Alfred P. Rovai; Mervyn J. Wighting; Robert Lucking

Internet and Higher Education Vol. 7, No. 4 (2004) pp. 263–280

The development and validation of an instrument designated as the Classroom and School Community Inventory (CSCI) are described. Scores on both the classroom form and the school form of the CSCI possess strong content validity, construct validity,...

Language: English

Development of an instrument to measure perceived cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning in traditional and virtual classroom higher education settings

Alfred P. Rovai; Mervyn J. Wighting; Jason D. Baker; Linda D. Grooms

Internet and Higher Education Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 2009) pp. 7–13

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a self-report instrument that can be used to measure learning in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. The study underwent three phases, each with its own data collection and...

Language: English