Discusses the term distributed education and its relationship to distance education. Topics include distributed training on corporate intranets; distributed expertise, which refers to the use of mediated communication for education and training by experts in different locations; and distributed, or situated, cognition, which would include…

Reports on one professor's use of integrated synchronous electronic office hours (i.e., a "chat room") with asynchronous course conferencing (i.e., email) in a class on introductory marketing. Describes its uses, limitations, benefits, potential problems, and results from a student survey. (EV)

This article describes a system that autonomously mediates threaded discussions in distance learning environments. The objective is to produce large-scale threaded discussions among an arbitrary number of participants with no human mediation effort.

Questionnaire data have many important uses, but is laborious for the subjects to provide. EDUFORM tries to alleviate this problem by enabling the creation of adaptive online questionnaires. The idea is to build a probabilistic model from previously gathered data, and employ it for predicting the profiles of new users on the basis of a subset of…

This column describes the latest innovation in iPod use, podcasts, which are audio files that can be downloaded and played either through a computer or an MP3 player such as an iPod. Because they are feeds, users can subscribe to podcasts and have them downloaded automatically to their computers. The author discusses ways in which podcasts may be…

Previous computer conferencing research has been concerned with the organizational, technical, social, and motivational factors that support and sustain online interaction. This article studies online interaction from a different perspective. Rather than analyze the processes that sustain discourse, the following research examines how and why…

Instant digital communication is going to say and the wise teacher needs to acknowledge and keep pace with the technology that eases and speeds up the way the DIG (digital immediate gratification) generation learns. Some DIG- friendly strategies that teachers can employ to make learning more attractive and meaningful are presented.

The results of this study show that effective questioning skills increase student intellectual moves that, in turn, facilitate the process of knowledge construction in online synchronous discussion (OSD). The open-ended questions elicited multiple perspectives by promoting student participation, while OSD enabled them to share and debate multiple…

This article reports on a project (electronic role-play) run at Nottingham Trent University. It investigates how knowledge can be constructed collaboratively in an open setting based on computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the internet as primary source for material. The analysis will concentrate on evidence of (1) focus on language form and…

To fully acculturate into society, English language learners (ELLs) need to be conversant with the language and culture of their peers. The National Association for Media Literacy (NAMLE) asserts that media, including the electronic media, are an integral component of modern culture and function as an agent of socialization. They assert that to be…

As increasing numbers of adolescents become involved in online activities, many also become victims of cyberharassment. This pilot project investigates how a program teaching coping skills (Best of Coping program, BOC) and a program teaching cybersafety (Cyber Savvy Teens program, CST) can optimise adolescents' capacity to cope online.…

This dissertation addresses the related questions of how online communication technologies affect communication in science and, more broadly, how new ways of interaction in online spaces affect how texts enact genres. Genres have been usefully thought of as typified discursive responses to recurrent social exigences, and much recent work has shown…

This booklet gives adults practical tips to help kids navigate the online world. Kids and parents have many ways of socializing and communicating online, but they come with certain risks. This guide encourages parents to reduce the risks by talking to kids about how they communicate--online and off--and helping kids engage in conduct they can be…

A central role of any educational leader is that of an accomplished communicator--one who can relate to diverse communities, promote cooperative interaction, and unify stakeholders around the larger cause of quality education for every student. This sixth volume in the "Soul of Educational Leadership" series provides innovative ideas on diplomacy…

This exploratory study centered its investigation in the participants' responses provided in 2 different instructional teaching delivery methods (traditional and online) that utilized active-like teaching learning techniques (case studies, group projects, threaded discussions, class discussions, office hours, lectures, computerized assignments,…