The study examines students' assessments of the use of the flipped classroom approach in an undergraduate course in the Business Department at the College for Academic Studies in Israel. In its essence, learners prepare for classes by watching videos away from class, allowing the classroom encounter to focus on discussion, exercises, and discourse. Data were collected by a questionnaire distributed toward the end of the course. The students reported that watching videos between lessons enhanced interest, alleviated boredom, and enriched the learning. To a lesser extent, they reported it increased their involvement in learning, understanding of the learning material, and confidence in their ability to understand it. While acknowledging the convenience of watching course videos between classes, however, the participants clearly preferred to watch them in class. Multivariate analysis revealed that working students were less positive about using the flipped-classroom approach than non-working students, female students were more positive than male ones, and older students were more positive than younger ones. Furthermore, the stronger the senses of having classmates nearby, the more positive the participants were about the contribution of watching the videos.Keywords: Flipped-classroom approach, Higher education, Improving classroom learning, Educational videos IntroductionThe flipped-classroom model is a pedagogical approach that has become something of a buzzword in the last recent years. In its essence, learners prepare for classes by watching videos away from class, allowing the classroom encounter to focus on discussion, exercises, and discourse on the basis of what students learned from the videos. The origin of the flippedclassroom approach is attributed to a number of researchers and teachers. For example, the researcher Baker wrote about Classroom Flipping in a paper from 2000 described the evolution of the classroom teacher from "the sage on the stage" to "the guide on the side" (Baker, 2000). Also, the science teachers Bergmann and Sams started employing the flipped classroom model in (Noonoo, 2012. Later, Salman Khan, who in March 2011, on Ted Talk, introduced his initiative for the development of short videos in mathematics. The idea was that students should watch the videos before class, freeing the teacher to focus classroom time on discussion, exercises, and helping those who have difficulty. At the present writing (August 2014), more than 2,600 clips have been produced on a range of topics in mathematics, biology, and physics, to name only a few (https://www.khanacademy.org). Allowing students to watch videos before class, at the time of their choosing, as often as they wish, and stopping wherever they feel necessary, is revolutionary-a "flipping" of the traditional model of classroom learning. In this new paradigm, the "lecture" is studied online and away from class and the "homework" is done in class itself. Studying course content before a lesson in class is not a novel idea in education. ...

This paper reports findings of a survey of online learners from Western (mostly US), Israeli, Mexican, and Japanese cohorts. An instrument with 58 questions, including several open-ended items, allowing 318 respondents to tell their "stories" as online learners, was disseminated online in late 2008-early 2009. This research study attempts to better understand how students engage in online learning in terms of interacting with the medium and materials, with the instructor, and with one another. Also, with four distinct cohorts, representing four countries and cultures, there is some value in determining if there might be certain differences between these learner populations that are driven primarily by cultural orientation. The study revealed that the majority of respondents rated their satisfaction with their online learning to be positive. The findings further reveal that these cohorts produced a diverse list of positive/negative aspects influencing satisfaction/dissatisfaction, identified items critical to being a successful online learner, as well as challenges in their online learning environment. The majority indicated that success as online learners ultimately depended more on self-determination than on institutional support. Summary findings and analyses presented here provide evidence of some commonalities across groups and reveal experiences and opinions that can contribute to formulating a set of competencies useful to both online learners and providers.

This article reports on a study conducted in Israel at an academic institution. The study investigates the correlation between students’ attitudes toward open and distance learning (ODL) and their perceived self-esteem and loneliness at the last stage of their online learning experience. For this study, 120 students were asked to complete a questionnaire. The students were enrolled in three fully online academic courses, which were similar in their instructional design approach although different in content. Findings reveal that there is a positive correlation between self-esteem and attitudes toward e-learning in general and toward online interaction with the instructor in particular. The findings further suggest that there is no correlation between loneliness and student attitudes toward e-learning. Some explanations for these results are raised as are recommendations for further research.

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This paper describes a study of a blog, a web 2.0 application, as a learning tool for promoting thinking dispositions. The study was conducted at the College for Academic Studies in Israel, in the Master Program of ICT and Learning. Data was collected from a sample of students' blogs using rubric for the study. The results show that students' postings displayed evidence of thinking dispositions processes. In almost all blogs there were indications of a variety of thinking dispositions In addition, the findings indicate an increase in frequency of 2.3 representations of habits of mind during the period of this study.