A growing portion of international schools are franchised branches of schools originally founded in other countries. The first of such schools opened in 1996 and there are now almost 100 globally. Expansionist schools are primarily elite, English private schools, with concentrations of their franchises developing in the Middle East, Southeast…

As multivalent concepts, projects and formations such as China's Belt and Road Initiative continue to cleave through new spaces, it is increasingly important to attend to the construction, framing, maintenance and dissemination of the sign systems that enable them. Whether or not these systems constitute forms of cultural imperialism, move across…

Introduction: Previous studies suggest that the users of social question and answer Websites contribute their knowledge to a community in exchange for intrinsic rewards from other members, such as reciprocity and reputation. Thus, rewarding knowledge contributors is of great importance for maintaining the users of such Websites. However, there is…

The central hypothesis of Semantic Network Model of Creativity is that creative people, who are exposed to more information that are both novel and useful, will have more interconnections between event schemas in their associations. The networks of event schemas in creative people's minds were expected to be wider and denser than those in less…

As one of the top U.S. choices for international students, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a solid reputation in China and a history of educating Chinese students that goes back more than a century. But the university did not realize until last June that its nickname in China is the "Cornfield Ivy" and that Chinese…

Since 2010, the number of urban Chinese high-school students applying to US universities has rapidly grown. Many of these students have chosen emerging international curriculum programs established by elite public high schools in China. These programs prepare wealthy Chinese students for the US college application process by exposing them to an…

The present study examines the professional growth of three Chinese English teachers by analyzing their interactional patterns and their social and cognitive presence in an online community. The data from social network analysis (SNA) and content analysis revealed that computer-mediated communication (CMC) created new opportunities for teachers to…

Feedback has long been utilised as an effective tool to enhance learning. Between students and teachers; students and students; students and schools, feedback provides a channel of communication between all parties within an education system. With the emergence and development of social networking sites (SNSs) over the past decade, it has become…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

This paper reports a study that investigated the social interaction pattern of collaborative learning and the factors affecting the effectiveness of collaborative learning in a social networking environment (SNE). A class of 55 undergraduate students enrolled in an elective course at a Chinese university was recruited for the study. The…

Twitter, the micro blogging tool, has seen unprecedented growth in the past year and is expected to continue into the future. Twitter's power, engagement, and popularity lie in its endless networking opportunities. Its potential as a venue for professional growth and development needs to be explored, discussed, and ultimately used as such. A brief…

While collaborative learning and collaborative writing can be of great value to student learning, the implementation of a technology-supported collaborative learning environment is a challenge. With their built-in features for supporting collaborative writing and social communication, wikis are a promising platform for collaborative learning;…

Social networking sites have seen tremendous growth and are widely used around the world. Nevertheless, the use of social networking sites in educational contexts is an under explored area. This paper uses a qualitative methodology, autoethnography, to investigate how social networking sites, specifically Facebook[TM], can help first semester…

In assessing the application of social media on the teaching of business communication, this article looks at MBA student use of blogs, online photo database contributions, and video contributions to YouTube channels. These assignments were part of their course activities, which included a 2-week study tour in China. The article looks at these…

This dissertation aims to investigate how advanced information technologies cope with the various demands of disaster response. It consists of three essays on the exploration of micro-blogging and FOSS environments. The first essay looks at the usage of micro-blogging in the aftermath of the massive 2008 China earthquake and explores the…