From a design perspective, the intentionality of students to engage in surface or deep learning is often experienced through prescribed activities and learning tasks. Educators understand that meaningful learning can be furthered through the structural and organizational design of the online environment that motivates the student towards task…

Sustained discourse is critical to the learning potential of online courses. And, while research has surfaced many factors that mediate interaction, it further suggests that sustained interaction remains elusive. In this paper, I propose that student facilitation may have an impact on the quality of facilitators' interactions following a week of…

This study examines the roles of Canadian school leaders in response to the rising phenomenon of student use of social media which impacts school climate and safety. The use of social media has resulted in more online text and image-based communication to multiple users and less face-to-face communication with single users. Adolescent…

We examine (a) what social ties university students with a history of reading difficulty (RD) report assisting them to achieve their goals, (b) outlets available for developing social ties, (c) resources mobilized within these relationships, and (d) the impact of social ties' status on academic achievement. Participants were 107 university…

The study buddy is a learning strategy employed in a graduate distance course to promote informal peer reviewing of assignments before submission. This strategy promotes student-student interaction and helps break the social isolation of distance learning. Given the concern by Arum and Roksa (2011) that student-student interaction may be…

The purpose of this study was to examine the progress of a class of third- and fourth-year undergraduate science students as they attempted to create a knowledge building community in a blended or hybrid science education class. The research sought to examine this process through analyses of the frequency of their note postings and responses, and…

A growing literature suggests that there is a disjuncture between the instructional practices of the education system and the student body it is expected to serve, particularly with respect to the roles of digital technologies. Based on surveys and focus group interviews of first-year students at a primarily undergraduate Canadian university and…

This paper examines how emergent technologies could influence the design of learning environments. It will pay particular attention to the roles of educators and learners in creating networked learning experiences on massive open online courses (MOOCs). The research shows that it is possible to move from a pedagogy of abundance to a pedagogy that…