Discusses vicarious learning and the use of multimedia and distance learning technologies, focusing on attempts to generate and capture educationally effective discourse exchanges among and between students and faculty. Highlights include problems with available computer-medicated communication discourse formats; task-directed discussions; and…

Discussion of distance education for higher education and the use of interactive computer-mediated communication systems focuses on the results of a survey of faculty and administrators that examined motivating factors for participation in distance education and inhibiting factors, including technical support, faculty workload, and concerns about…

Examines the impact of new forms of communication technology on our concepts of literacy and literacies, particularly in relation to personal computer use, and argues that the unique quality of hypertext structure underlying computer-mediated communication, asynchronous and nonlinear, challenges many accepted notions of the nature and structure of…

Examines past and current research in key areas concerning the use of distance education. They include: distance versus traditional education; why students are successful; importance of interaction; important cost to benefit factors; and use of distance education to effectively bridge cultural boundaries. Discusses how these findings can be…

Investigates how participants (39 teenagers and 10 college-age online mentors) interacted and constructed shared knowledge of concepts, goals, tasks, procedures, and solutions when solving a real-world problem in an Internet-mediated project-based learning environment (iExpeditions). The main focus of the study was on how different patterns of…

Describes a computer-mediated teaching system called computer-aided personalized system of instruction (CAPSI) that incorporates a social constructivist approach, maintaining that learning occurs primarily through a socially interactive process. Discusses use of CAPSI in an undergraduate course at the University of Manitoba that showed students…

Looks at on-line tutor strategies for the support of students learning a second language with the help of a Web-based asynchronous textual conference. Looks specifically at strategies used by three tutors who participated in a project with students of French. (Author/VWL)

Computer-assisted language instruction is no longer new, and language teachers are now poised to move forward as they witness shifts in ways of thinking about the authenticity of using electronic media to communicate with language learners, the difference between using and thinking with a technology, and the hypervisibility of language students'…

The present study expands the design of Warschauer (1996) surveying freshman foreign language students at a Turkish university. Motivating aspects of computer assisted instruction in terms of writing and e-mailing are explored through an exploratory factor analysis conducted on the survey developed by Warschauer (1996). Findings suggest that…

Educators who are prepared to make use of CSCL can find themselves restricted in their space for maneuvering regarding educational innovation. As a supportive context can be very important for them, the study presented here describes and analyzes a related case of a Community of Practice (CoP) among tutors contributing to the development and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an example of how the synergy of different competences in students' teams, out-of-the-box thinking style and various motivation factors in a culturally diverse learning environment is the foundation for knowledge construction, driven by the idea generation process and co-creation--the so-called…

A key component of conventional distance education organizations has been the network of local study centres, set up to serve as a bridge between students and the educational organization. With the capacity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enable direct contact between the educational institution and its dispersed students,…

This study involved fourteen semistructured interviews with teaching staff at a Brazilian university. These interviews were aimed at unveiling possible transformations caused by distance education in classroom teaching and in medical assistance practices. The discourses collected were analyzed using qualitative methods and divided into groups with…

Distance education reverses the traditional way of providing education to the learning community. Instead of students coming to the university to get that needed education, the university comes to the student. This research/survey of undergraduate engineering distance learning universities was conducted utilizing traditional and virtual sources of…

In 2 years, RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) set up an online learning system for 50,000 students. The development of the RMIT Distributed Learning System has taken the University from a cottage industry model to a fully fledged enterprise system for flexible online learning, integrated with the University's student administration system and…