The purpose of this action research was to explore students' perspectives regarding using Web 2.0 technologies to develop a community of learners. The course described in this study was a fully online course in an Educational Learning Technologies master's program at a medium-sized university in the U.S. Southwest. A variety of Web 2.0 tools…

Instructors have the ability to respond to student evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com (RMP). The current research conceptualized the juxtaposition of student evaluations and instructor responses using communication processes on participatory websites. In an original experiment, the results demonstrated that when faced with multiple negative…

Rancorous dialogue among political opponents is nothing new in the American political system. However, in the past two decades or so, pundits and scholars have noted an increase in the overall intensity and frequency of incivility among elected officials and citizens. At the collegiate level, many universities have undertaken some form of civility…

Teacher education involves an identity transformation for trainees from being a student to being a teacher. This discourse analysis examined the online discussion board communications of a cohort of trainee teachers to better understand the situated identities of the trainees and how they were presented online. Their discussion board posts were…

This paper explores a middle school teacher's and his students' perceptions of the differences between online synchronous literature discussions and face-to-face literature discussions. Each member of this literature group participated in two face-to-face and two online literature discussions. Participants were interviewed twice to discuss their…

The "Community of Inquiry" (COI) theoretical framework suggests that successful higher education experiences are supported by the presence and interaction of cognitive, social and teaching elements. Since the COI model has been widely used for examining quality of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) educational interactions, its…

This project utilized computer technology to establish an email discussion forum for communication and learning in which students shared information, ideas, and processes of learning multicultural education. This paper presents the quantitative count of email messages and qualitative analysis of students' perceptions of email discussions. It then…