Offers suggestions about how faculty can incorporate technology into midsemester student feedback, asserting that it gives students more opportunities to provide input. (EV)

Helping students become information seekers, synthesizers, analyzers, evaluators, innovative thinkers, problem solvers, decision makers, producers of knowledge, communicators, and collaborators is one way to create an environment that minimizes cheating, plagiarism, and copyright violations. In such an environment, you may also be able to take…

In April 2003, the government closed all schools for several weeks in Hong Kong to halt the spread of the virus causing Severe Upper Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). In 2004, schools in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia closed down for weeks at a time because of potential terrorist strikes. School leaders need options to continue to provide the educational…

What does it mean to be a citizen in a digital world where technology has facilitated global connections? The children of today are immersed in a digital age, and as increasing numbers of students go online, they require skills to securely and responsibly take full advantage of computers and the Internet. Despite the natural enthusiasm that many…

The provision of a professional development programme for distance tutors can be problematic because of the need for flexibility to cater for a variety of working practices, or to overcome the hurdles imposed by geographical remoteness. At the UK Open University, online networks are widely in use for teaching and learning, and we are actively…

Teacher-Librarians are continually seeking opportunities to collaborate with the classroom teacher. Most of them have experienced the professional satisfaction resulting from a successful project, and they have also endured those that were stressful and less productive than the anticipated. Indeed, the best schools and the best librarians…

This study investigated the effects of interaction devices on the Internet performance of novice older users, and ways to provide appropriate voice assistance to enhance browsing and searching performance of such users. Three experiments were designed and conducted to test three hypotheses. The results indicated that touch screen and handwriting…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect that participating in online literature discussions would have on the discourse and learning of adult students. Would electronic literature (e-lit) discussions promote grand conversations? Would students feel that e-lit discussions enhanced their understanding of what they read, and, if so,…

Early views considered computer-mediated discussions (CMDs) to be ideal forums for fostering dialogue because women and other marginalized groups could be equal participants. However, such optimistic views have been tempered by research that found CMD to be dominated by a few individuals, often men, and discourse that is sometimes abusive. The…

This paper reports an investigation of the impact of students cognitive style on their effective use of educational text-based computer-mediated conferences. The research centres on an empirical study involving students from three courses run by the British Open University. Statistical analysis of the data does not suggest that cognitive style has…

Tools for measuring cognitive engagement within online groups have been concerned only with measuring an individual participant's cognitive engagement, without any concern for measuring cognitive engagement within groups. There remains a serious need for a scheme that measures cognitive engagement of groups and the validation of such a scheme…

Kenneth W. Dobbins, president of Southeast Missouri State University, discusses attending a June 2004 conference on "The Key to Competitiveness: Understanding the Next Generation Learner," sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, EDUCAUSE, and Microsoft. The conference addressed what today's students, the…

With the expansion and continued development of computer technology, a new world of educational opportunities is opening up via on-line distance learning. While distance learning is far from new, recent years have seen an explosion in the mechanisms and tools available for its implementation and support (Spodnick, 1996). It is also reported that…

This article discusses the processes of interaction among learners in higher education using a model of content analysis to examine their social construction of knowledge through computer-mediated communications. We examined students' conference transcripts for evidence that their collaborative communicative acts generated constructions of new…

As adolescent Internet use grew exponentially in the last decade, with it emerged a number of correspondent expectations. Among them were the following: (1) that gender predicts usage, i.e., that boys spend more time online, surfing the web and playing violent games, while girls chat or shop online; (2) that Internet use causes social isolation…