This article explores girls' learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant messaging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and poststructuralist feminist theorizing of gendered subjectivity, agency, and power, the article draws from qualitative interviews with…

This study examines the JUNIOR SUMMIT online community, which consisted of 3,062 adolescents representing 139 countries, varying SES, and a range of experience with computers. The online forum culminated in the election of 100 delegates. By analyzing the messages posted before results of the election were announced, we explore whether language use…

This article looks at the use of computer-mediated communication in an ESL teacher education course. A course listserv was established so as to facilitate increased interaction between students on the premise that community building and student collaboration in the construction of knowledge and understanding play important roles in the training of…

Online dialogues can meaningfully engage a diverse audience and provide a method to both educate and interest the public in complex environmental and social issues. This article discusses a series of e-dialogues conducted for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Canada in which the public engaged in discussions concerning the risk and…

Although baby boomers were not the sole focus of the American Association of Retired Persons' (AARP) website content on the issue of Social Security reform, their interests were addressed in a variety of ways. AARP provided information, position statements, a live chat forum, and message boards. Additionally, AARP had a partnership with the Rock…

This study compares the effects of forum discussion with metacognitive guidance versus forum discussion without metacognitive guidance (Forum) on solving real life mathematical tasks and self-regulated learning. Participants were 43 Grade 7 students (boys and girls) who practiced online problem-solving in two classes. The metacognitive guidance…

Purpose: This paper demonstrates the need for the higher education sector to develop and implement scaleable, quantitative measures that evaluate community and establish organisational benchmarks in order to guide the development of future practices designed to enhance the student learning experience. Design/methodology/approach: Literature…

Now well into its second decade, the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) appears healthy, encompassing a diversity of topics of study, methodologies, and representatives of various research communities. It is an appropriate time to ask: what central questions can integrate our work into a coherent field? This paper proposes…

Anecdotal evidence existed about the many students who use their laptops and the wireless network in university common spaces, but little was known about how, where, and why students use laptops on campus, and less was known about students' awareness of university wireless network policies and security. This article discusses the results of a…

There is increasing interest in creating frameworks for online discussions to improve learning outcomes in higher education environments. Many of these frameworks rely on and promote argumentation-based "challenge" models as the primary mode of discourse. This study tested one existing framework, created by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997),…

This study aimed to examine gender and status effects in the kind of e-mails used to manage course administrative issues in an educational setting. Students were asked to respond to an e-mail presented as being from a member of staff, informing them of failure to submit coursework and asking for an explanation to be provided. The sex and status of…

Past studies of online discourse found social presence to be a critical element in the learning process. Social presence connotes the extent to which students perceive themselves as intellectually connected to the other participants in an online dialogue. Impediments to the development of social presence can disrupt knowledge formation as a group…

This paper reports on a case study on the implementation of "language games" as a pedagogical tool for analyzing, assessing and promoting the quality and the level of collaborative knowledge building in online learning dialogues. Part of the overall objective is to explore the use, strength, weaknesses, and limitations of using the…

This study quantitatively synthesized the empirical research of the gender effects on people's communicative, interactive, affective, and process patterns using computer-mediated communication (CMC). In total, 321 independent effect sizes were extracted from 50 studies involving a total of 63889 users exploring the gender difference in the use of…

This qualitative study explores the dynamics of exchanging e-journals among counseling trainees who participated in an interpersonal growth group. Interviews were conducted with participants who discussed the influence of e-journals on their group experience. E-journaling extended the group both spatially and temporally, and participants reported…