Social learning analytics (SLA) tools are designed to visually demonstrate online discussions with a goal to foster student engagement. However, empirical studies indicate controversial results of the effect of SLA tools on student engagement. This design-based research designs a student-facing SLA tool to demonstrate discussions from three…

This paper reports on a study involving the design of a virtual community for informal learning about Thai herbs. The community relied on social networking tools and a database of expert knowledge as well as community coordinators. One group of coordinators (Community A) concentrated efforts in recruitment of members on those individuals most…

Student life has changed a lot since 2005 when the idea to create a Social Network Service (SNS) for students in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading was conceived and went live in 2006. Over the next few years, this service (known as RedGloo) was offered to students at the university with the aim of supporting their…

Online discussion forums represent "online collaborative learning spaces in which communities become engaged in the discourse on a topic about which they share common interests or goals" (Montero, Watts & Garcia-Carbonell, 2007, p. 568). This digital communication modality has been claimed to enhance second/foreign language (L2)…

While much of the e-learning development at universities in the past 15 years has been on institutionally supported Learning Management Systems (LMSs), alternative educational technologies are being taken up following the rapid growth in emerging technologies, including social networking sites (SNSs). While teachers may choose educational…

Facebook is a popular social networking site. It, like many other new technologies, has potential for teaching and learning because of its unique built-in functions that offer pedagogical, social and technological affordances. In this study, the Facebook group was used as a learning management system (LMS) in two courses for putting up…

Higher and further education institutions are increasingly using social software tools to support teaching and learning. A growing body of research investigates the diversity of tools and their range of contributions. However, little research has focused on investigating the role of the educator in the context of a social software initiative, even…

Mobile phones have rapidly been absorbed into the fabric of our day-to-day lives. They are now a key consumer item, a symbol of social capital and they connect their users to a mobile web with multiple applications. As ownership and access to smartphones has spread into the teenage years, their place in institutions of formal education has been…

To date, little empirical research on professional use of social network sites has been conducted, particularly with reference to groups of teachers on Facebook. The paper presents the results of two surveys addressed to the founders of five Italian Facebook groups and their members (n = 1107), with the aim of investigating mechanisms underlying…

The trend to adopt more online technologies continues unabated in the higher education sector. This paper elaborates the means by which such technologies can be employed for pedagogical purposes beyond simply providing virtual spaces for bringing learners together. It shows how data about student "movement" within and across a learning community…

In the last decade, we have seen the emergence of virtual learning environments. Initially, these environments were a little more than document repositories that tutor used unicast to the students. Informed in part by social constructivist theories of education, later environments included capabilities for tutor-student and student-student,…

This exploratory research investigates how students and professionals use social network sites (SNSs) in the setting of developing and emerging countries. Data collection included focus groups consisting of medical students and faculty as well as the analysis of a Facebook site centred on medical and clinical topics. The findings show how users,…