This article examines some of the ways graduate students engage in interactive writing in online university courses as a means of discussion. In particular, I present data from course transcripts that suggest that discursive interaction in an asynchronous, text-based, online course may be uniquely suited to fostering higher-order thinking and…

Business organizations are increasingly adopting collaboration tools to increase communication within the firm. CAMS is a home-grown online collaborative environment which makes heavy use of participant's pictures. Participants, both faculty and students, were asked questions about the benefits and usefulness of pictures in the CAMS collaborative…

Generating true learning dialogue as opposed to a collection of loosely affiliated posted messages on a class discussion board can be challenging. This paper presents the results of a cross-case analysis of nine naturalistic case studies of online classes, looking at how activity design and facilitation factors affected various dimensions of…

In post-industrial societies saturated with the multimodal texts of consumer culture--film, computer games, interactive toys, SMS, email, the internet, television, DVDs--young people are developing literacy skills and knowledge in and for a world significantly changed from that of their parents and educators. Given this context, this paper seeks…

Purpose: Aims to investigate the way that the semantic web is being used to represent and process social network information. Design/methodology/approach: The Swoogle semantic web search engine was used to construct several large data sets of Resource Description Framework (RDF) documents with social network information that were encoded using the…

Two experiments investigated if and how visual representation of interactants affects depersonalization and conformity to group norms in anonymous computer-mediated communication (CMC). In Experiment 1, a 2 (intergroup versus interpersonal) x 2 (same character versus different character) between-subjects design experiment (N=60), each participant…

The assessment of learners' metacognitive knowledge level is crucial when developing computer-assisted language learning systems. Currently, many systems assess learners' metacognitive knowledge level with pre-instructional questionnaires or metacognitive interviews. However, learners with limited language proficiency may be at a disadvantage in…

This study investigates gender differences in Internet use by Greek high school pupils within school and out of school environments. A sample of 340 pupils (170 boys and 170 girls), aged 12-16 years, completed a written questionnaire on their attainability, location, frequency and purposes of Internet access. The data analysis showed that more…

This paper reports findings from a study of undergraduates' expectations about, and experiences of, networked learning using computer-mediated conferencing (CMC). The data come from questionnaires administered at the start and end of four different courses, and their interpretation is informed by a set of interviews with students and teachers…

A recent study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation titled "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds" finds that young people today spend an average 6 1/2 hours per day with one or more forms of media. Given that a majority of media available today is in digital format, students are increasingly expecting to use the same or similar…

This article describes the experiences of an inservice professional development project for secondary mathematics teachers as project staff struggled to build professional community through online discussions of teaching mathematics with technology. Data from two consecutive years of the project are reported and analyzed in terms of Riel and…

Innovation of education is highly topical. It is obviously boosted by a range of new technologies, which enable new modes of learning that, are independent of time and place through Web-based delivery and computer-mediated communication. However, innovators in education often encounter intrinsic conservatism or even deliberate obstructions. For…

The previous report in this series discussed how collaborative tools can be used in the development of formal and non-formal online communities. The current report describes the specific development of an online community advocacy group.

With the ever-increasing impact of information technology (IT) on society, universities are pushed to deliver the courses through the Internet by the format of Web course or online study. There are relatively few studies of how students construe this new mode of delivery and study. This study aimed to better understanding of how students construe…

Most, if not all, systems have a mechanism that collects information to facilitate monitoring performance. This information is primarily used to modify the system to make it more efficient in performing desired tasks and, thus, attaining desired results. Similar to electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic systems, the feedback mechanism in an…