In this article we research Spanish educational influencers with major presence on Twitter: what are the most common topics or hashtags used by them, whether there are groups based on the topics of their interventions or what type of social network they configure. To meet these goals, we selected 54 educational influencers with a high number of…

This study evaluated the online participation of 40 students who, while studying a graduate programme in a fully online higher education institution, were assigned to small online groups for a four-week period in order to develop a written task. The type and frequency of their postings in the online forums were analysed. In addition, knowledge…

Democracy is based on individuals' ability to give their opinions freely. To do this, they must have access to a multitude of reliable information sources (Dahl, 1998), and this greatly depends on the characteristics of their media environments. Today, one of the main issues individuals face is the significant amount of disinformation circulating…

The study analyzes the type and quantity of co-occurrence of social, cognitive, and teaching presence in a Community of Inquiry (CoI). Content analysis of the virtual educational communication shows units of analysis that must be assigned to more than one category. By crossing the categories of the CoI model, we observe that Social Presence is…

Virtual exchange, or telecollaboration, is a well-known pedagogical approach in foreign language education that involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This article focuses on the role of the teacher as pedagogical mentor in virtual…

Blogs provide an open space for scholars to share information, communicate about their research, and reach a diversified audience. Posts in academic blogs are usually hybrid texts where various genres are connected and recontextualized; yet little research has examined how these genres function together to support scholars' activity. The purpose…

This study examines the linguistic resources by which foreign language (L2) learners express their ideological positions in online discussions taking place in a telecollaborative encounter during one semester. More specifically, the study attempts to decipher how L2 learners discuss and argue their points of view regarding their first culture,…

In this paper we explore the data gathered from a group of nine in-service teachers who were trained online to become future telecollaborative teachers. Participants from different countries worked in two small groups in a wiki designed specially to facilitate discussion and collaboration. Tasks included reading and reviewing articles on…

This study performs a content analysis of the communication that develops in online educational situations. It focuses on two aspects of communication in a context in which we observe instructional leadership: how leadership is seen in the virtual classroom and how teachers view their role. The study attempts to answer the question of how teachers…

The TILA project originated from the need to explore whether and how telecollaboration affects language learning processes for communication, intercultural understanding and motivation of youngsters learning foreign languages at secondary schools and to empower teachers to pioneer meaningful pedagogical innovation in the curriculum of foreign…

We present a case study to analyze how higher education students attending a Spanish University (N = 100) democratize the virtual classroom by assuming responsibility for their learning and that of the other members of the class; participate actively in social, cognitive, and teaching issues; and collaborate by creating a learning community and…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…

A case study was used to analyse the relationships between participation in an online discussion forum and the cognitive quality of the contributions made. Participation was calculated using two dimensions: presence (who accesses the environment, how often and for how long) and connectivity (who interacts with whom and the degree of intensity of…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…

Many recent studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) have addressed the question of orality and literacy. This article examines a relatively recent subgenre of CMC, that of written online sports commentary, that provides us with written CMC that is clearly based on firmly established oral genres, those of radio and television sports…