This descriptive pilot study employed the Grascha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scale (GRSLSS) to examine student communication and interactions in an online educational discussion that occurred for fourteen days. Discussion activity exhibited conversational turns and messages appeared as conversation rather than expository. Individuals scoring…

This paper seeks to improve approaches to the learning and teaching of culture using new technologies by relating the key qualities and dimensions of the culture concept to elements within a pedagogical framework. In Part One, five facets of the culture concept are developed: culture as elemental; culture as relative; culture as group membership;…

Handwritten notes, meeting for coffee, eye contact, a handshake, a smile--are these social practices of yesteryear, soon to be replaced by the "wall posts" and "pokes" of today's social networking technologies? Although advances in social networking technologies allow for new and perhaps more efficient means of learning and…

Practice-based education is gaining a growing popularity in fields as diverse as, for example, software engineering, pedagogy and medical studies. In practice-based education learning takes place across different learning arenas and requires cooperation among all the actors involved in the learning process. However, mobility of students across…

People connect on Facebook by asking to "friend" one another. A typical user lists at least 100 such connections, while newbies are informed, "You don't have any friends yet." A humbling statement. It might make one want to find some. But friending students can be even dicier than befriending them. In the real world, casual professors may ask…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the nature of student comments on anonymous end-of-course evaluations differed relative to course delivery medium. Comments evaluated were submitted by 202 graduate students enrolled in face-to-face (F2F) and online versions of research and statistics courses over a four-year period. Results suggested…

This study focused on the effects of peer moderation on meaningful interactions in online discussions. A meaningful interaction was defined as a message relating to a discussion topic, responding to a previous message, and adding substance to the discussion. A randomized-subject, posttest-only control group design was used to test the first…

E-mail is a tool that can vastly increase the efficiency and productivity of school leaders. It can enable them to better orchestrate school operations and so improve student learning. But administrators must remain wary of the effect that extensive e-mail communication can have on the school community, and they need to work to promote a healthy…

The Internet can be a tremendous aid to research, information sharing, and social networking, but it also raises Murphy's Law to new heights: If anything can go wrong online, it will. And when it goes wrong, educators' jobs and reputations are sometimes at risk. For example, there is the former student teacher in Pennsylvania who filed a federal…

Online victimization is a concern among many who work with youth. This article reviews the latest research on online victimization then promotes honest dialogue, personal responsibility of the youth, and proper reporting actions as strategies to reduce this type of victimization. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative inquiry into the interactions on a nonprofessional self-harm message board. Individuals using the message board were very positive about the message board and appeared to feel that their needs for support, venting, and validation were being met. However, we found that negative harmful behaviors…

This article describes a study which was designed to explore how sentence openers supported students' construction of arguments in an online learning environment. The study involved a group of students from a teacher training institute in Singapore. As part of the overall teacher training program, the students attended a course that equipped them…

The projection screen in the dimly lit auditorium was ready and an online chat window was open on the computer screen. Computer experts and entomologists were ready on the other end. One by one, students filled up the rows of seats eagerly anticipating what was going to happen next. Each student was asked to close their eyes. Ms. Hadley asked…

In this article, the author presents Daryl L. Barton. Ms. Barton works as an associate professor of law at Eastern Michigan University. Despite having a steady job, money was still her concern until she tried teaching online. She puts in hundreds of hours online each year evaluating student work, responding to e-mail messages, and recording…

The authors who happened to be moderators of academic online discussions bring tales from the trenches. Whether it's computational chemistry, the history of the book, or women's studies, the technology and the users can both prove difficult. The first author talks about two scholarly discussion lists. SHARP-L, whose name comes from the Society for…