Social reading is an interactive reading activity that activates readers to read and discuss through social annotation, facilitates the expression of diverse ideas, and promotes collaborative inquiry and knowledge building. Social reading is a common activity in higher education. However, discussions on how social annotation can be combined with…

This dissertation brings together two research strands that study: (a) the ways in which physics and STEM students contribute to growing capacity for institutional change within collaborative teams and (b) the support structures of graduate programs through an innovative methodology grounded in network science. The first research strand is…

Group cognition is a cognitive science concept that studies how groups think, learn, and work. Most research investigates group cognition as a qualitative-oriented phenomenon. From a quantitative perspective, this research proposes a measure equation of group cognition, conducts empirical research during online collaborative problem-solving, and…

With the growing role of online multi-participant collaborations in shaping the academic, professional, and civic spheres, incorporating collaborative online practices in educational settings has become imperative. As more educators include such practices in their curricula, they are faced with new challenges. Assessment of collaborations,…

Interdisciplinary training for doctoral students is an emerging scenario in higher education. The learning relations of knowledge transfer (KT: transferring knowledge from one person to another) and knowledge integration (KI: integrating or synthesizing perspectives from different disciplines) built by doctoral students play an important role in…

This study combines research methods from student approaches to learning research and social network analysis (SNA) to examine patterns of students' collaborative learning based on their learning orientations amongst 193 postgraduates enrolled in a blended course. The study identified two distinct learning orientations, namely 'understanding' and…

This article presents an experiential exercise where students learn the basics of social network analysis, relate social networks to social capital, and analyze their own networks in the classroom. Instructors of all types of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels can use this activity to teach students about social networks and…

Discussion forums are used to support socio-collaborative learning processes among students in online courses. However, complex forum structures and lengthy discourse require that students spend their limited time searching and filtering through posts to find those that are relevant to them rather than spending that time engaged in other…

Communication, the flow of ideas and information between individuals in a social context, is the heart of educational experience. Constructivism and constructivist theories form the foundation for the collaborative learning processes of creating and sharing meaning in online educational contexts. The Learning and Collaboration in…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…

This study explores the efficacy of the online social networking site "Facebook," for linking international digital media student cohorts through an e-mentoring scheme. It reports on the 2011 collaboration between the University of Adelaide in Australia, and Penn State University in the United States. Over one semester, twelve…

This paper focuses on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) among foreign language (FL) graduate students from three universities, who worked together to create a wiki. In order to investigate the nature of CSCL among participants, this qualitative case study used the Curtis and Lawson framework (2001) to conduct a content analysis of…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…