Background: Instructors often try to promote student engagement with discussion boards in learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas. Although convenient, alternatives like the social media platform Reddit may be more effective. Method: A non-randomized controlled trial compared the use of Canvas and Reddit in two sections of two undergraduate…

The present study presents an experiment in which online acronyms, formed from common fixed phrases or formulaic expressions, and in common usage in English medium computer-based communication, were presented to Korean university-level learners placed into either a control group or treatment group which was given instruction into the expansions…

Teacher feedback is the key to online collaborative discussion. To investigate the effects of different forms of teacher feedback intervention on learners' cognitive and emotional interactions in online collaborative discussion, this study collected collaborative discussion text data of online collaborative learners. Based on the framework of…

Objective: We investigated psychological factors that might predispose individuals to sad-fish or exaggerate their emotional state online to generate sympathy. Participants: Participants (N = 347) were collegiate social media users from a large university in the Southcentral United States. Methods: Participants completed an anonymous online survey…

In a previous study we detected that a number of inquiry stages (data collection, analysis and conclusions) went unnoticed by the students of an in situ joint online/onsite master's degree via online teaching. In this paper we analyse the effect of improved instruction, in which students fully experienced and became aware of all the stages that…

As technology continues to change human interactions, it has become increasingly important to create computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments that enhance perspective taking to support constructive groupwork. To meet these aims, this study examined perspective taking before and after a social annotation activity that…

Online discussion is one of the frequently used learning activities in an e-learning process. Learners can exchange opinions and thoughts with their peers through online discussion, stimulate their different viewpoints on the discussion topics, and enhance the learning effectiveness of e-learning. However, most learners mainly take an effort on…

The role of practice has been largely overlooked in second/foreign (L2) pragmatics research. Furthermore, very few studies have directly compared the effects of different "practice contexts" (e.g. practice in a telecollaborative context versus practice in a face-to-face context) on L2 learners' pragmatic competence (e.g. in compliment…

Communication strategies interlocutors use to avoid or resolve potential problems in face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated interactions can facilitate English learners' second language acquisition (SLA) (Smith, 2003). Such strategies are beneficial because they encourage English learners to practice the second language (L2), learn vocabulary,…

This article reports on a comparative analysis of two sets of essays, student-discursive essays (SDEs) and ChatGPT-generated discursive essays (ChatGPT-GDEs) on the same essay topic using Coh-Metrix. It focused on three Coh-Metrix indices, lexical density, syntactic complexity, and referential cohesion as the basis for the comparative analysis.…

The pervasive use of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in second language (L2) learning has generated increasing interest among researchers in integrating SCMC with task-based language teaching (TBLT). This study examined the effects of task complexity on Chinese EFL learners' language production in SCMC modality to develop…

Developing assessment and feedback strategies to assist students with progression and graduation is a key focus for many higher education institutions. However, student engagement with feedback is often poor and they can find it difficult to act upon; often stating the feedback is generic or of insufficient quality for improvement. Here, I present…

This study uses self-determination theory to examine the effect of gamification on the students' behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement in online discussion forums by providing more instructor badges than automatic badges and using a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. Behavioral engagement was measured using the number…

Previous studies compare quantitative feedback ratings of student peers and instructors, but new presentation-feedback technologies enable qualitative-feedback comparison. This study extends previous research by comparing qualitative feedback and business professionals' feedback. Compared to the professionals, the instructors provided similar…

This study examined the effects of reflective practices (RP) on self-directed learning competencies (SDLC) as well as the relationship between technology-mediated collaborative learning (TMCL) as a reflective practice and SDLC in a preservice teachers' class. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the effects of RP on SDLC. In addition, a…