The rapid and impressive development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in less than half a decade has generated contrasting arguments about their social dimension. This paper investigates how the socio-economic background of learners affects their own experience and chances of course completion. The analyses test whether learners with a low…

Limited health literacy is a barrier to optimal healthcare delivery and outcomes. Current measures requiring patients to self-report limitations are time-consuming and may be considered intrusive by some. This makes widespread classification of patient health literacy challenging. The objective of this study was to develop and validate…

Chapter 1: School Cellphone Bans and Student Substance Abuse: Evidence From California Public High Schools: Following high profile school shootings and the September 11th terrorist attacks, public concern over school emergency preparedness prompted the California State Legislature in 2003 to overturn a statewide ban against student possession of…

Background: Text messaging is an increasingly common mode of communication, especially among adolescents, and frequency of texting may be a measure of one's sociability. This study examined how text messaging ("texting") frequency and academic performance are associated with adolescent sexual behaviors. Methods: A cross-sectional survey…

Civic engagement is an important marker of thriving among adolescents, and more research is needed that clarifies the ecological assets (positive supports across settings) that foster youth civic engagement. Simultaneously modeling associations between multiple ecological assets and civic behaviors can provide a nuanced view of the way…

Campuses across the United States continue to welcome a record number of Chinese students coming in pursuit of both academic and cultural goals. Yet, high levels of acculturative stress coupled with difficulties integrating into life abroad jeopardize accomplishing these goals. In this study, we examine Chinese students' Internet use both prior to…

The present study had two main goals: to explore performance differences in a task-based environment between face-to-face (FTF) and oral computer-mediated communication (OCMC) groups, and to investigate the relationship between trait-like willingness to communicate (WTC) and performance in the FTF and OCMC groups. Students from two intact…

While many researchers have sought to identify pedagogical strategies to create a sense of connectedness in online courses, few have investigated e-mail correspondence between student and instructor. The current study addressed this issue and found students' sense of connectedness to be strongly correlated to feedback on assignments, instructor…

As online education continues to expand, colleges are demanding faculty to keep up with the pace and add new online classes. Oftentimes, online instructors rush the course creation process by focusing more on the course content than creating a sense of human presence in the virtual online community of learners. It was theorized that by simply…

With the growing market for online courses in California and the United States, institutions must better understand how the faculty-student dynamic, defined as the interactions between faculty and students in the online environment, impacts student engagement and success. The purpose of this study was an in-depth exploration of faculty…

Web-based communication technologies that enable collaboration and sharing of information among users - such as podcasts, wikis, blogs, message boards, and others--are used commonly in contemporary organizations to increase and manage employee learning. In this investigation, we identify which of these collaborative communication technologies are…

Accurately detecting emotional expression in women with primary breast cancer participating in support groups may be important for therapists and researchers. In 2 small studies (N = 20 and N = 16), the authors examined whether video coding, human text coding, and automated text analysis provided consistent estimates of the level of emotional…

Unlike traditional interventions, Internet interventions allow for objective tracking and examination of the usage of program components. Student Bodies (SB), an online eating disorder (ED) prevention program, significantly reduced ED attitudes/behaviors in college-aged women with high body image concerns, and reduced the development of EDs in…