This study documented how young children talked about story in a supportive environment. Participants were 22 kindergartners and their teacher, who engaged in extended talk about story after listening to a picture book or chapter from a novel. Data collected included transcripts of videotaped conversations during large- and small-group discussions…

A program at the Federal Reformatory, El Reno, Oklahoma, in which young inmates read and discuss significant literature in courses developed by the American Institute of Discussion. (LY)

Explains why Internet groups are a good medium for retrieving and exchanging information. An example of the use of netgroups to obtain information on the Gulf War of 1990-91 is given; the benefits of the informal nature of netgroups are discussed; and a mediated discussion group, Humanist, is described. (LRW)

This article describes the evaluation of separate discussion sections for special admissions students participating in a developmental program and attending an introduction to psychology course. In year one, the special admissions students were segregated into separate small enrollment discussion sections within the larger course. In year two,…

Contemporary discussions of education in blended-learning environments increasingly emphasize the social nature of learning which emphasizes interactions among students, or among students and instructors. These interactions can occur asynchronously using a text based discussion forum. A text-based discussion forum, however, may not work well for…

Written by teachers for teachers, this book on language in the classroom is concerned with the various ways children are taught and the various ways they learn in response to that teaching. Chapter 1 analyzes the prewriting discussion of a group of 16 year olds to provide a model of language in use, and suggests four factors affecting the quality…

This consultation was structured to provide a forum for participants to grapple with issues surrounding ethnic group identity, ethnic studies, intergroup conflict, and essential new roles for schools, colleges and community groups; and to chart new courses of action for New Jersey. The document includes a brief summary of the program. The morning…

Web-based instruction is not a new phenomenon. There are 15-20 years of research and literature to support the effectiveness of web-based instruction. The purpose of this article is to synthesize the research in this field in order to determine which factors are critical to the success of web-based instruction. We created a toolkit to assist…

The aim of the research is to compare the impacts of telementoring services, delivered using chat with video, chat with instant message, mobile phone, discussion board and video conference on proteges' academic achievements and opinions. Telementoring services, made up with five different instruments, were administered to a group of proteges,…

Asynchronous discussion technologies offer the advantage of providing time for reflection essential for higher order cognitive thinking. In the context of a ten-week graphic design foundations course in the Digital Graphic Design program at Vancouver Community College, this advantage provides an avenue for advancing critical discussion of design…

This paper discusses the use of focus groups to investigate criteria used by college students to determine their satisfaction with higher education, and presents the results of a pilot study. It reviews research on the use of focus groups, discusses the development of a focus group guide for the current study, and examines problems associated with…

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of an online student-facilitated health care communication electronic conference as part of a requirement of a health care communication course taught at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis in Spring 1995. Discussion focuses on the use of Internet components in…

This paper describes a method of reflective practice called "critical incident" which was used to examine teacher trainees' educational assumptions. A qualitative case study of one fifth-year teaching intern (Amy) at the University of Tennessee represents the experience of seven other master's level students already practicing within the…

A study explored how small groups of student readers interacted in a classroom over time to interpret short stories assigned by a teacher who functioned as participant/observer. The study focused on multiple readers in actual classroom situations to consider the relationship between the social and academic elements observable during day-to-day…

The Listening Partners project examined rural mothers' development of a sense of the power of their own minds and voices and the relationship between this sense of power and mothers' parenting strategies and their children's development. Two cohorts of 60 women from a rural, impoverished region of Vermont participated in the program. Half the…