E-Learning in Higher Education Methodological and Neurological bases, Students’ and Professors’ insights, Guidelines for teaching

Over the past two decades, and with particular acceleration since the pandemic, online teaching has shifted from a peripheral experiment to a structural component of higher education in the United States and Italy. This transformation has produced an urgent need for scientifically grounded criteria capable of guiding institutions, departments, and instructors in the design of cognitively sustainable and pedagogically coherent online university courses. Despite the proliferation of platforms, toolboxes, and “best practice” manuals, research has not yet fully integrated learning theory, neurocognitive evidence, empirical experience, and institutional ethics into an actionable framework for online instruction. This dissertation responds to that gap. The central aim of the study is to determine how university-level online teaching can be designed so that it is simultaneously grounded in established learning theories, aligned with neurocognitive constraints and affordances, responsive to the lived experiences of students and faculty, and coherent with evolving institutional and ethical guidelines. Five research questions orient the work: (RQ1) how classical learning theories and contemporary instructional design models must be reinterpreted for digitally mediated environments; (RQ2) how neurocognitive mechanisms, attention, working memory, emotion, social cognition, sleep, circadian rhythms, shape the conditions of online learning and generate specific design principles; (RQ3) how course architecture, peer interaction, and student involvement influence undergraduate students’ engagement and perceptions of online versus in-person learning; (RQ4) how faculty perceive online and hybrid teaching in terms of modality preference, design practices, technological readiness, assessment, and future directions; and (RQ5) which institutional, ethical, and technological frameworks should inform department-level guidelines for online university teaching. Methodologically, the dissertation adopts a mixed and layered approach. On the conceptual axis, Chapters I and II offer an extended synthesis of learning theories and instructional design models, followed by a neurocognitive analysis of attention networks, cognitive load, emotion, memory consolidation, inter-brain synchrony, fatigue, distraction, and circadian rhythm research. On the empirical axis, two cross-sectional surveys were administered in UCLA’s Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies: one targeting undergraduate students enrolled in Italian language courses (n=64) and another targeting faculty teaching online or hybrid courses in the department (n=46). Both surveys were administered via Qualtrics, approved through the institutional research ethics process, and analyzed using descriptive and interpretive methods to identify patterns, tensions, and design implications. The findings reveal a layered set of results. Regarding RQ1, the theoretical analysis demonstrates that classical paradigms remain relevant but require reinterpretation: in digital contexts, constructivist and socio-cultural approaches depend heavily on technological scaffolding, while cognitivist and multimedia models gain operational precision through segmentation, signaling, and workload management. Concerning RQ2, the neurocognitive review shows that online environments can either overload attention and working memory or, when well designed, amplify encoding, dual-channel processing, and consolidation through paced interaction and multimodal representations. Regarding RQ3, student data indicate a strong preference for modular pacing, transparent LMS architecture, multimodal materials, and meaningful interaction, alongside concerns about cognitive overload, weak social presence, and assessment fairness. Addressing RQ4, faculty express cautious optimism, but their practices remain uneven and often misaligned with cognitive or pedagogical evidence; many request clearer institutional support in assessment, feedback, and the ethical integration of AI. Finally, RQ5 reveals that institutional guidelines must address not only usability but also transparency, academic integrity, privacy, and the psychological cost of surveillance-based proctoring. These theoretical, neurocognitive, and empirical findings culminate in a set of guidelines for online university teaching presented in Chapter V. The guidelines function as epistemological instruments rather than prescriptive checklists: they articulate conditions for cognitively respectful course architecture, ethically grounded assessment, calibrated multimodality, purposeful interaction, and responsible use of artificial intelligence. The dissertation’s primary contribution lies in demonstrating that online teaching is not a diminished variant of in-person instruction but a distinct pedagogical ecology whose quality depends on principled, research-informed design.