Various formats of online discussion have proven valuable for enhancing learning and collaboration in distance and blended learning contexts. However, despite their capacity to reveal essential processes in collaborative inquiry, current mainstream analytical frameworks, such as the cognitive presence framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer,…

The paper focuses on a routine activity of academic supervision: Giving and receiving feedback based on the student's master's thesis manuscript. Two case analyses are presented on fundamentally critical feedback. Such feedback constitutes a recommendation to the student to seriously rethink the thesis, but there are various interactional…

Paper presented at the Merrill-Palmer Institute on Research and Training of Infant Development (Detroit, Mich., Feb. 15-17, 1968).

When an interview is used as a research technique, the process of the dialogue between the experimenter and the subject is a part of the experimental conditions. The dialogue can be extensively structured, or it can be open-ended. Though the latter situation may provide more information about the subject's thought processes, there is a greater…

This five-part document presents three approaches to research on instructional improvement, with the final two sections concentrating on problems and implications for diagnostic prescriptive instruction. Part 1 reviews comparative instructional effectiveness studies. Part 2 discusses the Trait-Treatment Interaction Approach (TTI) which is…

Describes some current techniques of classroom observation and evaluation, an area long neglected by sociologists. (AN)

Bytheway discusses the problems of representation and sampling methodology found in the Three Generation Family Study directed by Hill at the University of Minnesota. Hill responds to this criticism and challenges Bytheway to provide a better sampling design. (Author/HLM)

Examines difficulties associated with the use of conversational features in the analysis of mother-infant vocalization episodes. Observations of six mother-infant dyads revealed difficulties involving (1) pooling of data; (2) the unit of analysis; and (3) selection of appropriate "expected" values for dyadic parameters used in tests of…

Written transcripts of spouses' discussions were coded using two different systems. Findings indicate that the results obtained from one coding system cannot easily be compared with results obtained from the other system. Author calls for resolution of differences in coding procedures if relational communication research is to be usefully…

The existing empirical literature on the outcomes of marital and pre-marital enrichment programs is critically reviewed. Six specific issues are addressed in an effort to improve the quality and utility of further research and practice in this area. (Author)

Classroom research is caught between lack of rigor and lack of richness. When multiple classrooms are used, and when the performance of different groups or levels of students is regarded as "repeated measures" (or split plots) and analyzed accordingly, much of the descriptive richness of the interactions may be regained. (Author)

In response to a paper by E. Culpepper Clark, Eva M. McMahan, and Michael J. Hyde that calls for the application of hermeneutic theory to the study of the oral history interview, this paper notes problems in the relationships between the proposed research design and the conceptual framework for the proposed research. While conceding that the…

Discusses assignments in discourse analysis and students' recurring methodological errors. (PD)

Presents an exploratory study designed to provide some empirical basis from which to guide inquiry into the correlations between content and relationship dimensions of human communication. Illustrates the feasibility and potential for further research efforts to determine the interactions between these two dimensions. (JMF)

Summarizes Karl Weick's Model of Organizing including its advantages and limitations and tests one of the claims fundamental to Weick's argument. (MH)