This paper develops a better understanding of the explicit and implicit implications of the academic field's competitization, with a specific focus on the role that academic social networks and platforms (ASNPs) play in this process. While ASNPs are embedded within a broad and complex ecology of academic competition we show that particularly…

Do you know how to change your relationship status on Facebook? What about your language status? In most web 2.0 contexts, music preference or relationship status are more important than information about one's linguistic repertoire. In language learning communities and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004), however, language status is forefronted. This…

In order to reduce the passivity of students and enhance their learning experience in large lectures, we developed a browser-based tool called Classroom Interacter to promote classroom interaction. It allows students to use their own mobile devices to participate in the learning process. The main features of Classroom Interacter include live…

Distance learning and collaboration software is beneficial to on-site students as well as off-site students. Collaborative learning (CL) allows students to work together in small groups to help each other master academic material. CL helps teachers by exploiting the ability of students to communicate with each other, and more actively engages…

The purpose of this paper is to project present trends in application development into the next decades. The revolution in information technology has reduced the cost of computer hardware as well as communications. Networks will consist of three kinds of specialized components: clients, servers, and processors. Standardization of component…

There is evidence of the pedagogical effectiveness of online teaching and the teaching styles that work best with it. However, few studies have looked at the specific pedagogical approaches in relation to specific learning variables such as cognitive components, motivational components, and social components, and the online teaching features that…

This paper examines the possibility of technology supporting and facilitating the organization and development of knowledge in a particular field through critical discourse. The following three examples of discourse-structuring technologies have been investigated to determine whether selected software might support critical discourse to capture…

This first phase of a content analysis of online, asynchronous, educational discussions is designed to generate a method for automatically categorizing messages into cognitive categories using neural network software. This phase of research answers two questions regarding the method of automatically analyzing discussion messages: Can a neural…

The specific characteristics of the World Wide Web mean that publishing documents using this medium has a number of unique requirements and presents a different challenge to anyone wishing to put documents on the Web. Key issues which have to be resolved include determining the nature of the documents to be published, identifying whether documents…

A science classroom was used to study the effects of a shared intranet environment on students' problem-solving ability and metacognitive reflection skills through shared contextualization. Subjects were first-time 9th- and 10th-grade biology students from three public high schools. An evaluative analysis of the CourseInfo software (Blackboard,…

This paper presents the results of an experiment using videoconferencing in a distance graduate course in the Computer Science Department at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The purpose of the experiment was to test two videoconference technologies that are widely used on the Internet, Cu-SeeMe and Real technology, and to assess…

This paper describes Coconuts (Concurrent Collaborative Learning Environment Supported by Awareness), a proposed module of Sharlok (Sharing, Linking and Looking-for Knowledge), an open-ended and collaborative learning environment that integrates a knowledge building tool with a collaborative interface tool. Coconuts was developed in order to…