In the spring of 2021, staff from the University of Minnesota Morris participated in Fika Coffee Time gatherings, inspired by a Swedish tradition to slow down, have coffee, conversation, and a treat with friends or colleagues. As Minnesota is the state with the largest number of Swedish Americans, it has a great deal of institutions that celebrate…

Previous studies have confirmed the benefits of small group sizes in asynchronous online discussions. However, there is no consistency in which small group size is the optimal option for maximizing students' discussion performance. Moreover, few researchers attempted to apply the smallest group size (i.e., one-on-one) to online discussions and…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are purely online learning environments that are typically available for free for anyone with internet access. These courses have attracted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of learners around the world and the number of users has increased rapidly along with the growth of new platforms and a wide diversity…

Youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) aspire to participate in a variety of activities after high school, such as attaining paid employment, enrolling in postsecondary education, being involved in their communities, living independently, and building friendships. However, complex and longstanding transition barriers require…

Incivility in the college classroom distracts from the learning process. Students who are uncivil to their peers often shame and embarrass them in front of others, and uncivil students distract from learning opportunities by arguing with professors and coercing them for grades that were not earned. Incivility by students is counterintuitive to the…

This article investigates the communicative styles of three different peer mentors in the context of online language learning, and considers their effect on student engagement. A key objective is to show how an innovative corpus-based technique, keyword analysis, can be used as a first step towards identifying communicative styles. We view…

Difficulties with social communication may present challenges in gathering data from individuals with autism in research. To encourage individuals with autism to participate directly in research, methods that allow for autistic symptomology should be considered. An online forum was developed to enable adolescents with autism to share their social…

It is broadly admitted that social contexts of reasoning may prompt children and adolescents to improve the quality of their reasoning. However, it is not clear how this quality may be assessed when it comes to arguments expressed within oral interactions in diverse settings (whole-class or small-group discussions) by students of different ages…

Asynchronous online discussions are broadly used to support social learning. This paper reports on an undergraduate class's online discussion activities over one semester. Applying social network analysis, this study revealed a participation gap among students reflected by their varied levels of network prestige. The low-prestige group initiated…

Discussion forums are important components of online courses because of the collaboration and community they foster, and the language used within the discussion forums may be influential in this development. In particular, studying the gendered language patterns of discussion forums can help gain insight into students' state of mind and propensity…

This study investigated the impact of using a discussion strategy with learning analytics on the level of student cognitive presence and interaction. The study used a quasi-experimental design with control and experimental groups. The experimental group applied open-ended discussion and elaborated feedback with learning analytics while the control…

This study aims at investigating the kinds of turn-taking mostly used by EFL learners, how the turn-takings are portrayed as a process of EFL learning, and how the EFL learners differ in making their turn-takings according to their gender. This study was qualitative in nature, using 10 members of English Club of English department students,…

The present study investigated The Mixxer language exchange site (https://www.language-exchanges.org/) as a typical informal online community of self-directed language learners with a focus on how learners interact with each other. Learners' perception was also studied regarding how their language learning was impacted by their participation in…

Curricular innovations in English language programs have placed increasing emphasis on providing opportunities for students to speak in the classroom, often through communicative group activities. However, despite decades of advocacy for small group talk, a rigorous conception of the quality of talk in these groups is lacking, particularly in the…

This paper continues the discussion about student-driven, interactive learning activities in higher education. Using object-oriented activity theory, the article explores the relational aspects of reflexive practice as demonstrated in five online discussions groups to develop students' conceptual understanding. The purpose of the research is to…