The design for this preliminary study was based on the experiences of the international students and faculty members of a small southwest university being surveyed and interviewed. The data collection procedure blends qualitative and quantitative data. A strong consensus was found that supports the study's premise that there is an association…

Virtual teams have become an integral part of many organizations because of an increase in corporate restructuring, competition, and globalization. A virtual team is defined as one that conducts its work almost entirely through electronic technology. Virtual team members, who are typically dispersed both geographically and organizationally, rarely…

Wenger's theory of communities of practice (CoPs) helps explain how a group of Ph.D. students in the Department of Management Communication at the University of Waikato in New Zealand met a need for emotional and academic support and reduced isolation as they developed regular opportunities for face-to-face and virtual discussions on theory and…

Everybody wants to turn teens into regular library users, and a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project is chock-full of information that can help. If librarians better understand kids' online needs, and create libraries and services that respond to these needs, then teens will be much more likely to visit their libraries--either in…

Instructional communication researchers, by focusing attention on "how-to" matters and forays into conventional areas of study (i.e., immediacy, apprehension), neglect a nuanced treatment of student and teacher identity. Such a perspective is relatively disembodied and fails to engage actual classroom interactions. By engaging in autoethnographic…

Teaching can be a lonely business. According to the 1996 report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, many new teachers are "isolated behind classroom doors with little feedback or help while others learn merely to cope rather than to teach well". For many neophyte teachers this isolation begins during the student teacher…

In this article, the author, a Web development librarian at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, recounts how she initiated the implementation of a series of open source communication and collaboration applications for the Libraries' Web site and intranet, and how she gathered a number of tried and tested C&C tools that can…

Online discussion boards have the potential to provide significant support to beginning teachers; thus, we designed an online collaborative consultation community to provide mentor support to university students enrolled in an alternative certification program. The results suggest that although students in alternative certification programs will…

The Environmental Inquiry program supports inquiry based, student-centered science teaching on selected topics in the environmental sciences. Many teachers are unfamiliar with both the underlying science of toxicology, and the process and importance of peer review in scientific method. The protocol and peer review process was tested with college…

Issues 248 through 255 of "Fast Facts" from the Library Research Service present data gleaned from libraries in Colorado and across the nation. Topics addressed in these "Fast Facts" from 2007 include the library labor market, the benefits to libraries of using a statewide courier service, and the results of a patron survey at…

Although researchers and educators agree that small group collaboration is an essential part of teacher education, not much attention had been paid to examining the dynamics, characteristics, and processes of online group collaboration involving teachers in a peer-led context. Yet, understanding how online teacher learning groups evolve and what…

This article aims to explore the potential of certain future studies techniques to provide insight into the question of the impact of higher education information and communication technology (ICT) strategies on student learning. The approach is to consider three case studies of new universities in different countries, and to identify the main…

This study explores the relationship between online learners and the Web-based learning environments they study within. The extent to which the online learning environment constitutes a cultural influence on the learners, and the manner in which different individuals within the group influence the emergence of a particular cultural identity were…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how emerging technologies and Web 2.0 services are transforming the structure of the web and their potential impact on managed learning environments (MLS) and learning content management systems (LCMS). Design/methodology/approach: Innovative Web 2.0 applications are reviewed in the paper to…

Individualized conferencing, a situation where instructors and tutors work individually with students, is one traditional way in which students whose first language is not English (ESOL) can receive help as they learn and practice their English speaking and writing skills. This article is a demonstration of some of the practical strategies common…