The community of inquiry (COI) framework is a theoretical and practical model for creating deep, meaningful online learning experiences through three essential and interconnected elements: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Asynchronous online discussions (AODs) are the typical communication medium in a COI; therein, a…

The focus of this study was to answer the following overarching question: How does a Twitter discussion format compare to a Facebook discussion format in terms of promoting collaborative argumentative discourse? Data analysis focused on the difference in amount of arguments, counter-arguments, reasons, and elaborations generated by participants…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which instructor immediacy correlated with online community college students' perceived learning. The research questions that were investigated in the study focused on online instructor immediacy as it relates to praise (words of approval), encouragement (words of support) and examples…

Blogs, specifically special-interest blogs, generate in-depth discussions. These discussions offer a new window for researching emerging trends in both consumer behavior and social-political attitudes. Many people try to influence these discussions and trends via participation, but making an impact is not guaranteed. Not all comments have the same…

Given the value of participant interaction to enhance learning, and the growth of blended (face-to-face and online) delivery, the purpose of this study was to examine the way instructor-designers approach interactions in blended learning environments, and the effectiveness of these approaches in terms of student satisfaction and expectations.…

Various formats of online discussion have proven valuable for enhancing learning and collaboration in distance and blended learning contexts. However, despite their capacity to reveal essential processes in collaborative inquiry, current mainstream analytical frameworks, such as the cognitive presence framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer,…

From Facebook to Twitter, ordinary citizens' use of social media to discuss, organize, and participate in the political process continues to grow in popularity (Davis, 2005; Rainie, 2005; Kohut, Keeter, Doherty, & Dimock, 2008). Researchers interested in this area have explored the demographics, patterns of behavior and motives of participants…

A total of 90 small-group, free-flowing, peer-led discussions were analyzed to investigate teacher influence on fourth-grade children's argument construction. Teacher-child and child-child interactions were examined for recurrent patterns. A number of teacher-child discussion moves were clustered into three main categories: (a) prompting for and…

This study examines the relationship between two ways of measuring critical thinking in online discussion forums. The study proposes that the results from content analysis, a well-developed technique that is used to measure level of thinking and knowledge construction in online environment, would relate to the results from social network analysis,…

The present study explored how negotiation of meaning occurred in task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) environment among college English learners. Based on the theoretical framework of the interaction hypothesis and negotiation of meaning, four research questions arose: (1) how negotiation of meaning occur in non-native…

This study examined the influence of instructor-facilitated Socratic questioning in online discussions on the critical thinking skills of undergraduate students enrolled in a proprietary institution with nonselective admissions criteria. A sample of students was purposively selected from two sections of an online introductory business course, with…

Project LOGgED ON was a project supported by the U.S. Department of Education that maintained two initiatives, a.) to provide online case based professional development for teachers in gifted education, b.) to provide online advanced science curriculum for underserved gifted students. For the purposes of this study, the author will examine the…

Students benefit from collaborative learning activities, but they do not automatically reach desired learning outcomes when working together (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007; King, 2007). Learners need instructional support to increase the quality of collaborative processes and individual learning outcomes. The core challenge is to find…