Fostering Academic Performance in Online Learning

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will focus on fostering academic performance in online learning. The goal of academic performance is true learning and shifting student learning from lower levels, such as knowledge and comprehension, to higher levels, including evaluation and synthesis. This increase in student skills and performance better prepares students for the workplace.

Student learning in higher education is significantly impacted by engagement with the instructor and peers in online classrooms, as well as transactional distance. In addition, academic performance is significantly affected by social factors such as work and family, since many students who take online classes are adult learners. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many students in secondary schools were forced to adapt to emergency remote learning, which differs significantly from and is not as effective as properly designed online learning. This may have led to unrealistic student expectations for online learning and the internal motivation that is needed to be successful. Academic performance is a complex construct that is impacted by numerous factors.

This Special Issue is seeking papers which address such topics as:

• Student engagement;
• Decreasing transactional distance;
• Robust online assessment;
• Transformative learning;
• Problem-based learning;
• Instructional design for academic performance;
• Administrative actions and procedures for academic performance;
• Technology to improve academic performance;
• Emerging pedagogies;
• Student retention and academic success;
• Other factors related to effective learning and academic performance. 

Original research (qualitative or quantitative), case studies, meta-analyses and reviews are welcome.

Dr. Colleen M. Halupa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• online learning
• academic performance
• robust learning
• online assessment
• student retention
• academic success
• transformative learning
• emerging pedagogies
• academic policies and procedures
• technology to enhance learning
• robust instructional design
• problem-based learning