Distance or online learning is more than simply uploading and delivering learning resources to learners but in fact, it is a process that provides learners with autonomy, responsibility, flexibility and choice. This can be a challenge for many academic teachers. In 2020, as universities globally shifted to online learning, in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a variety of staff have supported colleagues to develop e-learning techniques ‘just-in-time’ for effective delivery to students in fully online platforms. This has required a transformation of educational development and faculty support globally. This paper will reflect on mechanisms of support demonstrating tailored staff support to transform education in three case scenario contexts, during the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in three different countries. Our case studies illustrate that support lies beyond technological capability building to also incorporate the essentials of holistic well-being and resilience reinforcement. This paper demonstrates temporary solutions to a global crisis in online education and reflects on lessons learnt and how eteaching and e-learning support may transform beyond the pandemic.

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This paper aims at contributing to an understanding of using online learning communities in teachers' professional development in the context of lifelong learning. To investigate that, this study is designed as a systematic review. Research questions of this study are indented to reveal what the most repeated keywords combining with learning communities and/or teachers' professional development are, what the main characteristics of participants are, what the trends and difficulties in published works on teachers' professional development are. The results have been discussed in the context of learners and learning and it is aimed to map the studies on learning communities in teachers' professional development in the context of lifelong learning. It was found that online learning communities was also used under different names such as community of practice, computer-mediated communication and participatory media frequently. Researchers mostly used discussion boards as online communities. The other specific platforms to build an online communities were found to be learning management systems including Moodle, WebCT and D2L, Facebook groups and asynchronous platforms such as blogs. When the trends and difficulties in the published works on online learning communities in teachers' professional development were investigated, it can be said that using online learning communities to provide a constructive space for both collaborative learning and reflection on teaching, using an asynchronous space in addition to synchronous one, and getting support from peers if participants provide support were the trends.

This study aims to address the issue of low completion and high dropout rates in online and distance learning through play and gamification. The general aim of this study is to provide a set of gamification design principles for researchers and practitioners on how gamification can be used in online and distance learning programs in higher education. More specifically, the study intended to seek the answers whether student participation in the online and distance learning programs can be increased by the use of gamification, how the gamification influences the students’ academic performances in the online and distance learning programs and what learners think about integrating gamification into the open and distance learning programs in higher education. The study was designed as a sequential exploratory research, which is one of the mixed research methods. Findings indicate that integrating gamification into the online and distance learning programs has a significant impact on increasing students' visits to the learning environment. In addition, when the pre-gamification and post-gamification scenarios were compared in terms of students accessing to the content in the online and distance learning environment, it was discovered that there was a statistically significant increase. It can be also said that there is significant difference regarding to academic performances for gamified situations. Lastly, gamification is said to be fun by students and to contribute positively to their motivation. According to this, gamification has a positive effect on learners' e-learning behaviors and should be used more in online and distance learning programs.