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It is conceivably important that demographic variables such as gender may have an impact on community of inquiry (CoI) and perceived learning. This study is in response with Garrison et al. (2010) who suggest that there is a need to determine moderation effects of gender on the relationship between CoI elements and perceived learning. A total of 348 undergraduate students were drawn from blended programs in three public universities in Malaysia to be the sample of the study. As research instrumentation, participation in online and face to face session, the community of inquiry questionnaire, and a perceived learning scale were distributed among the respondents. All the questionnaires were validated by a panel of experts, reliability of the instrument was tested in a pilot study and assumptions of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were checked before analyzing the data. The findings of the study have shown that although differences between the two groups of undergraduate students (male and female) were statistically significant, the amount of differences were not enough to moderate the relationship between CoI components and perceived learning in undergraduate blended learning environments. However, the findings indicate that differences between the two groups of undergraduate students (male and female) were statistically significant.

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Given the importance of globalization as well as the need to train skilled and knowledgeable employees for the 21 st century workforce, higher education needs to take a more critical look at the educational practices and instructional methods which lead to improvements in students' essential skills such as self-directed learning. This study sought to examine the effects of project-based learning (PoBL) strategy on students' self-directed learning skills in a system-based education course offered in the educational technology department of Arak University in Iran. In order to achieve this end, a sample of 78 students in the field of educational technology who enrolled in the system-based education course was selected. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the two groups: the experimental group (PoBL strategy) and control group (conventional teaching strategy). The self-directed learning readiness scale (SDLRS) was administrated three times (i.e. pretest, post-test one, and posttest two). The experimental group received the PoBL strategy and the control group was exposed to conventional teaching (CT) methods. The results of two-way repeated measure ANOVA tests revealed that students who were taught using PoBL strategy performed significantly better in terms of self-directed learning skills than did students who were taught using CT strategy.

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