The purpose of this paper was to report on the findings of a study examining students' online interaction patterns. The context of the study was a graduate online class delivered via Blackboard[R]. The primary data for the study came from students' discussion board postings, online learning journals, and course grades. Various data analysis…

Distance education as a primary means of instruction is expanding significantly at the college and university level. Simultaneously, the growth of social networking sites (SNS) including Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace is also rising among today's college students. An increasing number of higher education instructors are beginning to combine…

This research attempted to test whether the granting of points for receiving the most votes as the "best post" would affect the quality of subsequent postings to online discussions. Five online discussions were held in a small graduate-level course in leadership theory, and postings were coded into Bloom's taxonomy. Quality was defined…

This study shows the importance of interaction to student learning within Web-based online learning programs. The population of this study was students enrolled in multiple academic disciplines at a private university in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area. A Web-based research instrument was designed to assess students' characteristics, their…

The experiences of students in an online learning community were explored in this qualitative case study using social presence theory as an interpretive lens. Participants included five undergraduate students in a certificate program at a large Midwestern university. Students who felt a sense of community online most highly valued the friendship…

In this paper, we present a case study concerning a Masters level course in Computermediated communications and pedagogy delivered at the University of Mauritius through e-Learning mode. We provide a brief overview of the program, its rationale and the pedagogical approaches that have been used to design the modules that are delivered in the first…

This study focused on students' reactions to handwritten and typewritten electronic feedback. Students submitted work electronically as part of an online course for which Blackboard was the learning management system. The instructor used a TabletPC to provide handwritten feedback on student work and the review tool in MSWord to provide typewritten…

This study compared the effects of system-initiated (low-level) facilitation with that of facilitator-initiated plus system-initiated (high-level) facilitation on cognitive restructuring and learning achievement. Graduate students participated in facilitated online discussion within a web course for one semester. This study found no significant…

The paper investigates interactions on five online courses involving staff that currently lecture or support learners in further and higher education at the University of Glamorgan, and its partner colleges throughout Wales. The qualitative research involves an ethnographical study of the ethos of the online communities of students. The findings…

Synchronous communication has a great potential to increase individual participation and group collaboration. Despite increasing use, scant research has been conducted on variables impacting successful synchronous learning. This study focuses on learner experiences in a real-time communication mediated by the Breeze web-based collaboration system.…

Online collaborative learning has typically been studied within the context of learning communities. Little is known about the potential influence of students' personalities on online communication, group interaction, and task engagement among members of a learning community. This study used a mixed-method, triangulation design, involving the…

Online learning courses are generally text-based. Particularly for students who are learning multimedia skills, these courses can be problematic because demonstration and hands-on activities are important in the field of multimedia authoring. This study uses action research techniques and describes the application of onscreen-action-capture…

The multiyear study discussed in this paper focuses on the use of a course management system (CMS) to deliver video clips and interactive mathematics investigations and to support shared reflections in a field-based elementary mathematics methods course. The findings reveal that virtual observations of mathematics teaching episodes in diverse…

This paper draws on data gathered from a five-month phenomenological study of middle school students' perceptions of the effects of computer-based technologies on a learning community in an online synchronous environment. Twenty-four eighth-grade students participated in the Web Pen Pals project, a university-secondary telecollaborative…

This paper reports the findings from a pilot study that investigated the uses of computer-mediated communication in an educational psychology course for pre-service teachers that focused on problem-based learning via CD-ROM-based case analysis. Thirty-nine pre-service teachers and eight practicing teachers participated in the development of an…