Seven in-employment postgraduate Master's level students in an e-learning unit participated in this research, designed to identify tensions between participation in a community of learning that was part of their studies, and participation in the communities of practice that they were engaged in at their workplaces. It was hypothesised that…

This study analyzed what kind of role sociometric status has in non-real time computer conversations. Computer-supported conversations were investigated by using two local area networks. Participants were 52 9 to 10-year-old schoolchildren selected from three sociometric strata: rejected, average, and popular. Children's preferred friends, school…

A focus is made on connectedness by explaining how the MOO is a unique tool that allows students to connect across distances short and long and engendering enthusiasm of reading and discussion. It is further shared how the MOO applications work together, enhance discussions and increase students' skills in communicating with each other.

Informal interactions are often undervalued, yet, studies in office and educational environments show that they play an important role in successful collaborative projects. Online courses however, offer limited opportunities for informal interactions, which might put them at a disadvantage when compared to traditional courses. To evaluate possible…

This paper describes a Web-based and distributed system named QSIA that serves as an environment for learning, assessing and knowledge sharing. QSIA--Questions Sharing and Interactive Assignments--offers a unified infrastructure for developing, collecting, managing and sharing of knowledge items. QSIA enhances collaboration in authoring via online…

This paper provides an account of the development of online communities at Ultralab for students engaged on masters-level programmes, doctoral research and continuing professional learning. It considers the ways in which the engagement of learners, and their consequent participation, is seen to be dependent on several factors--the learners'…

This article assesses the pedagogic value of the "chat" facility in the Blackboard integrated learning platform. It draws on a case study carried out by the author in the 2001-2 academic session. A level three class in research methods involved students in group working away from class and student feedback indicated that more support was needed to…

Most educators increasingly regard ill-structured problem solving as an important objective of learning and have sought various means to achieve it. In this article, we describe a learning environment to help pre-service teachers in Singapore solve ill-structured problems. There are four key dimensions in our learning environment: tutor-led…

This article outlines the evolution of a unique distance education program that began as a hybrid--combining face-to-face instruction with asynchronous online teaching--and evolved to become an innovative combination of synchronous education using live streaming video, audio, and chat over the Internet, blended with asynchronous online discussions…

Although computer-mediated discussions (CMDs) have the potential to be ideal forums for fostering dialogue, research on listservs and in college composition classes has found that the discourse tends to be dominated by a few individuals, often men, and is sometimes abusive. In contrast, results of our study in a teacher education course revealed…

Telementoring, also referred to as e-mentoring or online mentoring, has been carried out in a wide range of K-12 environments and continues to grow in popularity. Through a review of several studies, we argue that the potential for telementoring to support deeper and more authentic school learning will not be fully realized unless researchers pay…

This article reports on the development of measures of attitudes toward online and face-to-face counseling. Overall, participants expressed more favorable evaluations of face-to-face counseling than of online counseling. Significant correlations were found between online and face-to-face counseling with traditional help-seeking attitudes, comfort…

Computer-assisted language instruction is no longer new, and language teachers are now poised to move forward as they witness shifts in ways of thinking about the authenticity of using electronic media to communicate with language learners, the difference between using and thinking with a technology, and the hypervisibility of language students'…

Electronic mentoring programmes at colleges and universities and especially in engineering and science are a relatively new phenomenon. Electronic mentoring has been developed based on the possibilities unique to information and communications technology. The common feature of electronic mentoring programmes is the independence from geography and…

Due to the now widespread use of the Internet, most companies now require computer aided design (CAD) tools that support distributed collaborative design on the Internet. Such CAD tools should enable designers to share product models, as well as related data, from geographically distant locations. However, integrated collaborative design…