This is a summary of some of the issues raised in a recent on-line discussion within the IATEFL Teacher Trainers and Educators Special Interest Group. The IATEFL Teacher Trainers and Educators Special Interest Group periodically organizes on-line fielded discussions on pre-determined topics that are chosen and moderated by volunteers. From time to…

This research extended earlier public goods research on individual incentives to use an organizational information commons that was based in Marwell and Oliver's (1993) collective action model. A revised theoretical model that incorporated team-level social influence and technology-specific competence was proposed. The model was tested using…

Thirty-seven graduate students in two course sections were required to contribute to the online discussion of an instructional design case study. The discussion forums required different participation protocols; students in section one implemented a constructive argumentation approach while students in section two had less structure for their…

This paper examines the effect of heterogeneous resources, available to students, during computer-supported collaborative problem solving. A study of collaborative modeling has been conducted in the frame of an authentic educational activity in a secondary school. The students involved were provided with sets of primitive resources of varying…

The education of science teachers necessarily involves instruction around the use of computer technologies. Acadia University, a laptop institution, offers a unique setting where students are immersed in the critique of pedagogical applications of computers. The current trend to employ constructivist approaches in teaching provides a backdrop for…

This study examined the online collaboration and problem solving processes of preservice general education and special education teachers from two different states. The use of online collaborative problem solving across the miles was found to be a vehicle for preservice teachers to prepare to meet the needs of all learners in inclusive…

This paper reports on a case study which identifies and illustrates sources of difference in agreement in relation to reliability in a context of quantitative content analysis of a transcript of an online asynchronous discussion (OAD). Transcripts of 10 students in a month-long online asynchronous discussion were coded by two coders using an…

The present article presents conditions relating to the effective use of text-based computer conferencing for group interaction. More specifically, it discusses ways peers found in order to express themselves as members of on-line groups and if they were able to reach consensus during interaction. The findings of the research are based on…

Purpose: This paper aims to advance the argument for the transformative potential of e-mentoring for professional women. Design/methodology/approach: Existing mentoring and e-mentoring models are evaluated as the context for the development of an innovative e-mentoring programme for professional women in the UK (Empathy-Edge). The European…

Where the role of instructor discourse has been the focus of much recent research on asynchronous online instruction, the anatomy of effective instructional discourse of foreign language educators has yet to be examined. Indeed, the majority of work in the area of foreign language and telecommunications has concentrated on student-student,…

Research on interaction has provided important insights on how second languages may be acquired through interaction, and on how second language learners use their second language in various settings and tasks. Research into computer mediated communication (CMC) in a second language learning context has been a logical outcome of interactionist…

Recent research on online learning has explored the dense fabric of social presence giving us a better understanding of the rhythms of the teaching-learning exchange. Quantitative studies, especially, have concluded with calls for deeper, more intensive explorations into what happens in online learning environments (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, &…

For the past five years, the author has spent time talking with, interviewing, interacting with, and investigating language with adolescent females in chat rooms while they engage in synchronous talk. The discussion often centers on their interest in pop culture--music, movies, television, books, games, and anything else that is worthy of…

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are often portrayed as offering a collaborative community space in which native and non-native language speakers reciprocally scaffold linguistic, cultural and content knowledge, a space which assists students in overcoming well-documented challenges encountered in traditional classrooms (Leki,…

The document is a summary of the conference proceedings for the 23rd Annual Farmingdale State College Teaching of Psychology Conference held on March 20-21, 2009 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Tarrytown, New York. The conference featured a keynote address by Dr. Jeffrey Nevid on Reaching and teaching the millennials: Helping today's students become…