The network is a key concept which has been highly valued in connectivism. Research about the static characteristics of social networks in connectivist learning has been carried out in recent years, however, little knowledge exists regarding the principles of network evolution from a dynamic perspective. This article chose the first connectivist…

The Visitors and Residents model of internet use suggests a continuum of modes of engagement with the online world, ranging from tool use to social spaces. In this paper, we examine evidence derived from a large cohort of students to assess whether this idea can be validated by experimental evidence. We find statistically significant differences…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are courses offered for free for any students with an internet connection. Many institutions now offer free MOOCs, including prestigious state universities and private schools. MOOCs are differentiated from ordinary online classes in several ways. Some MOOCs may have as many 50,000 students enrolled in a course…

New infrastructures that dramatically change our possibilities for knowledge production and learning have also brought forward ideals on "new" connectivity. Two important ideals of connectivity are that of the individual who tailors his or her knowledge among expansively dispersed resources, and the ideal of access to multiple, diverse…

When major news breaks in our hyper-connected society, we increasingly turn to an encyclopedia for the latest information. Wikipedia's coverage of breaking news events attracts unique levels of attention; the articles with the most page views, edits, and contributors in any given month since 2003 are related to current events. Extant…

An extraordinary large-scale student movement in Hong Kong successfully forced the government to withdraw a patriotic education proposal in 2012. The student group has attracted serious scrutiny from the pro-government camp because of the students' unusually young age and remarkable mobilising power. This study aims to explore the community…

Family day-care (FDC) educators work autonomously to provide care and education for children of mixed ages, backgrounds and abilities. To meet the demands and opportunities of their work and regulatory requirements, educators need access to context-relevant and high quality information. No previous research has examined how and where these workers…

Social bookmarking has gained popularity since the advent of Web 2.0. Keywords known as tags are created to annotate web content, and the resulting tag space composed of the tags, the resources, and the users arises as a new platform for web content discovery. Useful and interesting web resources can be located through searching and browsing based…

Since its launch in 2006, the social media tool Twitter has grown from a "wait-and-see" communications site to a mainstream media darling. Last year was the tipping point for this site, which is as easy to use as it is to confuse. As its popularity has grown, there has been a shift in the way Twitter is used. Early Twitter adopters would follow…

Despite the widespread popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) amongst children and young people in compulsory education, relatively little scholarly work has explored the fundamental issues at stake. This paper makes an original contribution to the field by locating the study of this online activity within the broader terrain of social…

With the transition to being a knowledge-based society, the internet usage has become an irreplaceable part of life. As socials networks have come into our lives, the internet usage has taken a different dimension. People can affiliate to social networks in order to make friends, exchange information, find partners, and to play games. The process…

Information seeking is one of the most popular online activities for young people and can provide an additional information channel, which may enhance learning. In this study, we propose and test a model that adds to the existing literature by examining the ways in which parents, schools, and friends (what we call networks of support) effect young…

In this study, we explore the cognitive style profiles and linguistic patterns of self-organizing groups within a web-based graduate education course to determine how cognitive preferences and individual behaviors influence the patterns of information exchange and the formation of communication hierarchies in an online classroom. Network analysis…

This paper reports a 5-year design experiment on cumulative knowledge building as part of an international project. Through a longitudinal study and analysis of cumulative research data, we sought to answer the question, "what happened and why in knowledge building?" Research data constitute messages which participants have written into a shared…

The trend to adopt more online technologies continues unabated in the higher education sector. This paper elaborates the means by which such technologies can be employed for pedagogical purposes beyond simply providing virtual spaces for bringing learners together. It shows how data about student "movement" within and across a learning community…