This research brief comprises three articles published in the three-article dissertation at the University of Missouri (MU) in February 2023. The three-article dissertation, "An Exploration of Online Information Spaces That Support Instructional Design and Teacher Professional Development," examined three online communities of practice…

While social networking sites (SNSs) have attracted growing scholarly interest in uncovering L2 learners' participation within these sites, the impact of writing on SNSs upon students' writing performance and learner autonomy remains underexplored. This study reported on a college EFL writing course participated by two groups of Chinese first-year…

The rise of modern socio-digital technologies has fundamentally changed the everyday environments in which young people communicate with each other and cultivate interests. To gain a more sophisticated understanding of this phenomenon, this study provides in-depth, qualitative insights into adolescents' experiences of their socio-digital…

Higher education institutions may adopt various approaches to the pedagogic principles and methods used in teaching sustainable development in business and marketing courses. These methods can include the utilisation of digital technologies and online communication to facilitate distance learning and fast access to relevant information. Changes…

Teacher collaboration through networking needs to be promoted due to its positive effects on the world of teaching. Teaching collaboration in virtual environments affects the professional learning of teachers in their initial and in-service training, being potentially beneficial for instructional processes. The purpose of this paper is to know…

Social media has been shown to be an efficient way to engage in networked participatory scholarship (NPS), which is defined as the use of online social networks to share and further develop scholarship. As leaders in the field, educational technology scholars should be at the forefront of this practice. We used social network analysis (SNA) to…

In the study reported on here I investigated how teachers used available information and communications technology (ICT) resources to transform teaching and learning in the Bojanala district in the Northwest province of South Africa. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework enabled understanding of how the use of available…

Students always suffer from burnout during online learning. Although social support and cognitive engagement are associated with learning burnout, limited information is available on whether and how these relationships change over time in an online learning setting. This study investigated the longitudinal relationships between social support,…

This study assessed the degree of learning experiences, the extent of social media use, and their relationship. It involved 500 first-year IT students considered part of Generation Z as respondents enrolled in a state university in Central Luzon, Philippines. Utilizing the quantitative research method, the researcher employed a…

The emergence of digital communication channels has transformed faculty development, offering new opportunities for networking and collaboration. This paper explores successful practices for promoting connection and belonging among faculty members through platforms like Slack and Discord. Key strategies include creating dedicated channels for…

Information communication technology (ICT) that is used in instruction has attracted the attention of researchers with many studies having looked at the factors affecting how university instructors apply it in their teaching. Yet little is known about whether the gender of university teachers can impact their ICT use. This research relies on…

Networked and digital technologies are increasingly being used for learning in formal and informal contexts, and participant engagement occurs primarily via online discussions. In this paper, we describe an ongoing research project that focuses on examining and understanding student engagement in collaborative online discussions within a formal…

Online discussion research has mainly been conducted using case methods. This article proposes a method for comparative analysis based on network metrics such as information entropy and global network efficiency as more holistic measures characterizing social learning group dynamics. We applied social learning optimization analysis of networks…

Higher education is currently undergoing a revolution with the widespread use of electronic tools in classrooms. Simultaneously, personal opinions are increasingly stronger and more expressive resulting in electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM). This article presents two studies. The first study exposes students' opinions about higher education and…

In an era where digital platforms increasingly shape the educational experiences of learners, this dissertation examines activity in the Mathematics Discord Server (MDS), an expansive online learning community used by hundreds of thousands of mathematics learners worldwide. Daily interactions, numbering in the tens of thousands, focused on…