Emerging pandemics call for unique health communication and education strategies in which public health agencies need to satisfy the public's information needs about possible risks while preventing risk exaggeration and dramatization. As a route to providing a framework for understanding public information behaviors in response to an emerging…

Developments in technology including the Internet, social media, and mobile devices have opened the choices of available means for communication in the online classroom. The emerging means of communication between online students and faculty has spawned an interest for an examination of pedagogical influences in relation to existing theoretical…

This study explores the potential contribution of Eggins and Slade's (2004) Speech Functions as tools for describing learners' participation patterns in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC). Our analysis focuses on the relationship between learners' self-efficacy (i.e. personal judgments of second language performance capabilities)…

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating alternative communication modes to English as a Lingua Franca. The purpose was to examine the effectiveness of different modes of communication and to gain insight in communication strategies used by interlocutors to solve referential conflicts. Findings show that ELF may not necessarily be…

This study examines the use of technology for interaction by second-year college students in The Netherlands and its relationship with their integration and sense of belonging. The concepts of student integration and sense of belonging, as used in previous studies in The Netherlands, link student's persistence to their social interactions. Our…

This paper analyzes the effects of a support aimed at favoring the social regulatory processes in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment, specifically in a comprehension task of a multimedia text about Psychology of Communication. This support, named RIDE (Saab, van Joolingen, & van Hout-Wolters, 2007; 2012), consists…

Parent-teacher communication continues to evolve due to smartphones and other new communication technologies. In all, 1,349 parents completed the Parental Academic Support Scale to assess the frequency and importance of communication across modes. Confirmatory analysis revealed a good model fit. Media richness theory was applied to parents'…

A case study was conducted to assess the efficacy of online communication tools for enhancing independent student engagement in a first-year undergraduate class. Material relevant to course topics was shared with students through three communication platforms and data were extracted to measure student engagement. A questionnaire was also used to…

This study examined the gender difference in students' perceived discussion strategies in face-to-face and online asynchronous contexts. A survey of 363 university students and follow-up interviews of 20 participants was conducted to examine any gender differences within each context and between the two contexts. The Discussion Strategies Scale…

This study investigates the different learning opportunities enabled by text-based and video-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) from an interactionist perspective. Six Chinese-speaking learners of English and six English-speaking learners of Chinese were paired up as tandem (reciprocal) learning dyads. Each dyad participated…

Pursuing doctoral study away from one's institution may have logistical advantages but many off-campus doctoral students face challenges in accessing the sorts of training and collegial support offered to their on-campus counterparts. To enhance and maintain the quality of education offered to off-campus and distance PhD candidates, higher…

Learning in the affective domain includes the manner by which people deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations and attitudes. While out-of-class communication between instructors and students can impact all types of student learning it has its greatest impact on student affective learning. One…

Digital communication between organizations and the public is strategically important in shaping mutual understanding and long term relationship. The primary focus of this project was to investigate the relationship between message interactivity and relational maintenance strategy in the email communication process on organization websites. At…

Geographically dispersed teams rely on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to communicate and collaborate. Three ICTs that have received attention are audio conferencing (AC), video conferencing (VC), and, recently, 3D virtual environments (3D VEs). These ICTs offer modes of communication that differ primarily in the number and type…

This study investigated the effect of electronic communication has on parent's involvement with their high school child's education. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) specifically requires that schools find ways to increase parental involvement; this requirement stemmed from evidence that involvement tends to decline as the students…