Online distance learning presents unique psychosocial characteristics due to the inherent distance between learners. Social presence --the sense of being with others-- is key to mitigating this distance. However, our understanding of social presence remains limited, despite its potential to reduce social isolation and cultivate a conducive social…

Bullet screen technology enables instant interactive class communication and comments for teachers and students, even in large classes. This study explores the effect of a bullet-screen comment class on students' learning. It utilizes media and communication theory, expectation confirmation theory, and the technology acceptance model to present…

Mobile instant messengers such as WhatsApp have become an essential part of everyday life and can be a transformative tool for teacher professional development. Several studies have addressed the use of WhatsApp in a community of practices. However, there is a lack of study on examining teachers' interaction in WhatsApp community of practices,…

Student participation, as a significant indicator of class learning, has been investigated from various perspectives. The present research seeks to explore student participation by drawing on text data from the chat box of an online learning platform. The two main research questions concern the main types of student participation indicated by the…

The aim of this study is to gain insights into students' language use on social media as part of the specific linguistic activities of second language (L2) learning, including development of sociopragmatic competence. Two Facebook groups were introduced in different English-as-L2 classes that were part of an international collaborative project…

Currently available web page accessibility guidelines focus more on reading and writing, with inadequate attention to other aspects of online learning such as computer-mediated communication. This study aims to explore the engagement of Malaysia secondary school students with dyslexia and students without dyslexia on various synchronous and…

Teams of students in an upper-division undergraduate Usability Engineering course used a collaborative environment to carry out a series of three distributed collaborative homework assignments. Assignments were case-based analyses structured using a jigsaw design; students were provided a collaborative software environment and introduced to a…

Over the last decade online education has emerged as a way for students and faculty to collaborate more freely, attain greater flexibility, and utilize new media to learn. The burning debate lies in whether online educational options are harmful to traditional education or offer endless benefits necessary to accommodate a 21st century learner.…

Social and interpersonal support has mostly been carried out face-to-face. However, the internet was able, in the last couple of decades, to facilitate social interactions through a range of computer-mediated communication (CMC) interfaces--from email applications, chat-rooms, forums, instant messages (IM), short text messages (SMS), social…

The use of smart phones by teachers in K-12 education has been contentious. Although teachers are often instructed to put their phones away during instruction, teachers and students can benefit in many ways from using smart phones in the classroom. The use of information systems such as a smart phone can support knowledge sharing and collaboration…