Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterized by pervasive impairments, inhibiting social interaction and learning opportunities, often with ensuing behavior challenges (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Studies estimate that 25-30% of children with ASD do not develop flexible and consistent language (Hinzen et al., 2020; Schaeffer et…

This thesis aims to implement a prototype system to screen flooding photos from social media. These photos, associated with their geographic locations, can provide free, timely, and reliable visual information about flood events to the decision makers. This system is designed for the application to the real social media images, including several…

Can medical advice from other participants in online health social networks impact patient safety? What can we do alleviate this problem? How does the accuracy of information on such networks affect the patients?. There has been a significant increase , in recent years, in the use of online health social network sites as more patients seek to…

Learning to speak a foreign language (L2) can be a challenging feat, made all the more challenging when done in only 50 minute, daily increments in class. Oral asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) provides learners with opportunities to practice spoken communication and evaluate their practice outside the classroom. In this…

This dissertation studies attitudes of the Saudi university learners studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) toward using the Computer-assisted Writing (CAW) applications, e.g., up-to-date versions of word processing programs, for doing English writing assignments. Research has confirmed that CAW applications, e.g., up-to-date versions of…

In recent years, statistics have displayed a consistent increase in the enrollment in college programs of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research has explained that ASD college students currently face academic and social barriers as they transition to the college setting. There is reason to believe that the use of online…

Advancements in technology have greatly influenced how students write, the ways they interact with readers, and the genres they create. In order to reflect real-world writing behaviors in the assessment setting and to be able to generalize test-takers' performance from the assessment to their true writing ability, the current study investigated…

Genealogists are a community of practice (CoP) that has largely embraced the Internet as a research tool. Genealogists' use of the Internet was investigated using a case study of users of Ancestry.com, a subscription-based online genealogical resource. Data were collected using an online survey, allowing information and communication…

This dissertation examines the discourse produced by beginning learners of Spanish using social media. Specifically, it looks at the use and development of interactional resources during two video-mediated conversations. Through a combination of Conversation Analysis tools and quantitative data analysis, the use of turn-taking strategies, repair…

Despite the growing interest in examining the link between peer-peer collaborative dialogue and second language (L2) development in recent years (Swain, Brooks, & Tocalli-Beller, 2002), much of the empirical work in this regard focused on face-to-face communication, leaving the operationalization of collaborative dialogue in text-based…

This dissertation explored the effect of two planning conditions (the multiple planning condition with rehearsal and online planning time, and the single planning condition with online planning time only) on L2 production complexity and accuracy and the subsequent development of these two linguistic areas in the context of written synchronous…

The dissertation examines how synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication (SCMC) tasks may affect English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' development of second language (L2) and academic literacy. The study is motivated by two issues concerning the use of SCMC tasks in L2 writing classes. First, although some of the alleged…