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…

Identifying which online behaviours and interactions are associated with student perceptions of being supported will enable a deeper understanding of how those activities contribute to learning experiences. Student language is one aspect of their interaction in need of greater exploration within discourse-based online learning environments. As a…

This paper addresses the use of videography combined with group interviews, as a way to better understand the informal learnings of 11-12 year old children in cross-cultural encounters during French-German school exchanges. The complete, consistent video data required the researchers to choose the most significant sequences to highlight the…

A risk associated with the use of games in training and education is that players "game the game," instead of focusing on their learning goals. The term "gamer mode" is proposed to describe this attitude. A player with a gamer-mode attitude strives to achieve goals that are optimal for winning the game, but suboptimal with…

A category system was developed to describe content development in chemistry classes. The instrument had three broad dimensions: the Semantic dimension for coding the intent of the teacher in developing content; the Syntactic dimension for coding the actual meaning of the communication; and the Initiate-Supply dimension for coding the participants…