Some reading for you: other online journals

If you’ve spent any time on this site, you’ll have realised that I am a big fan of IRRODL. But it’s not the only open access journal out there, of course.

Browsing Terry Anderson’s blog (the Virtual Canuk) this week, I was alerted to another journal of which I’d been blissfully ignorant: The Journal of Educators Online. Terry commented on an article about time commitments in the online classroom, being particularly interested in the breakdown of tasks for the online teacher. JEOjpegWhat intrigued me was the picture of these individuals who are required to be in situ at the institution (apparently a university) from noon to 8 pm each working day (Mon to Fri), busily teaching an average of 80 students across four subjects. Seems a bit odd to me, and not conducive to a happy and productive work culture. I teach online from time to time, and part of the joy is being able to teach from anywhere at any time. Why is this institution not taking advantage of the inherent advantages of online teaching?

But I digress. The aim of this post is simply to make you aware of another source of potentially interesting articles on online teaching a learning. It’s open source, and if it’s any reassurance, it’s a peer-reviewed journal with an acceptance rate between 20 and 25 per cent. It’s been going nearly a decade, with the very first article being ‘The Effect of Software Facilitated Communication on Student Outcomes in Online Classes‘, by Stuart Gold. Published bi-annually, most articles are from the US, though it does strive to have an international flavour. Have a browse and see what you think – note that a minor irritation is that it doesn’t have a search function, so the word ‘browse’ is used advisedly!

JOLTjpegAnd then there’s JOLT: the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. It’s an output fron MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) at California State University. There are four issues per year, with each issue typically broken up into research papers, case studies, concept papers and position papers. It’s strongly international (terrific Editorial Board), and I was chuffed to observe that the current Editor, Mark Lee, is Australian.

It’s pretty solid by my estimation, but that may just be that the first article I spied was ‘The Complexity of Online Discussion‘, which panders nicely to my penchant for chaos and complexity theory. Anything which characterises online group discussions as complex adaptive systems is up there in my estimation.

… and it has a search function:-)

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