This study investigated the acquisition of speaking skills in an online distance education course of 19 first semester Spanish learners. The possibility of oral development in a strictly online course was examined based on students' pronunciation production in two types of recorded speaking activities and in two real-time conversations. Students…

This article describes the evolution of communication technologies, accompanying transformations in everyday communicative activity, and pedagogical possibilities these tools support in second and foreign language (L2) settings. We begin with an overview of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and uses of the Internet to mediate…

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) forms an integral part of the first-year Spanish course, "Spanish Without Walls" (SWW), designed for distance education. The CMC component of SWW supports bimodal (i.e., oral and written) interactions among students and the instructor and provides the same kinds of benefits as those in face-to-face…

Purpose: Feedback learning transforms social knowledge into individual knowledge. In this process, tension arises because the current knowledge impedes the assimilation of new learning. Therefore, the feedback requires what Schumpeter refers to as "creative destruction": discarding, or at least setting aside, the institutional order to enact…

Blended learning is a hybrid of classroom and online learning that includes some of the conveniences of online courses without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The present study used a causal-comparative design to examine the relationship of sense of community between traditional classroom, blended, and fully online higher education…

This article presents the concepts of interaction and immediacy and discusses their theoretical frameworks, implications, and relationship with one another. The authors propose the development of a new conceptual model and recommend additional antecedent research. (Contains 1 figure.)

Accessibility to online education programs is an important factor that requires continued research, improvement, and regulation. Particularly valuable in the enhancement of online accessibility is the Voice-over Internet Protocol (VOIP) medium. VOIP compresses analog voice data and converts it into digital packets for transmission over the…

This paper describes a multi-agent approach that aims at supporting learners involved in a collective activity. We consider pedagogical situations where students have to explicitly define the articulation of their collective work and then achieve the different tasks they have defined. Our objective is to support these students by taking some of…

This study examined the effects of response time and message content on the growth patterns of discussion threads in computer-supported collaborative argumentation. Event sequence analysis was used to measure response times between threaded messages and responses containing arguments, evidence, critiques, evaluations, and other comments from…

This article discusses the creation of a teacher as researcher learning environment in one small rural Idaho elementary school through the Internet. At the request of five elementary school teachers from the same rural school district, the researcher, a university professor, created an online course, "Teacher as Researcher," which provided…

This pilot study explores the use of Internet Relay Chat facilities such as ICQ in an independent-use mode, as a vehicle for potential English language enhancement. In a small-scale study, a number of Hong Kong secondary school students (Grades 7-10) agreed to participate in an on-line "chatting" programme (in a text-only mode) for a minimum of 20…

In this paper we examine how the figure of the teenager is positioned within the discourses and practices of commercial online media. In particular, we explore how the popular, Australia-based web portal "ninemsn" works discursively to shape the identities of young people. Ninemsn not only constructs and circulates selected…

The academic study of Education (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of "contrapuntal reading" with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday…

Electronic publishing and the use of electronic sources in the humanities open up new possibilities for research and the exchange of ideas while simultaneously providing solutions for how to overcome the crisis in scholarly publishing. In order to improve the usage and academic acceptance of electronic resources in the humanities, it is necessary…

This study was part of a two-year review regarding the use of Web-based case conferencing to enhance, extend, and transform the learning of preservice teachers in an introductory educational psychology course. First, Web conferencing enhanced the learning opportunities within educational psychology by providing an electronically shared space for…