The research interrogates the connections between information and communication technologies' (ICTs') use and change processes in Australian higher education. The empirical investigation focuses simultaneously on three domains of practice: the educational, the technological and the organizational, with a particular interest in their overlaps and…

This paper reports the findings of three qualitative studies which were carried out in university level EFL classes in Germany. The three groups used various combinations of communication technologies such as email, web-based message boards, and video conferencing in order to engage in online exchanges with different partner classes in Ireland and…

This study critiqued the notion that a binary "digital divide" between high and low resource schools describes accurately the technology disparity in U.S society. In this study, we surveyed teachers from six southern California schools. Five of the schools were low resource schools and one school, chosen for comparative purposes, was…

This study explored how asynchronous discussion supported by a Web-based learning system facilitated collaborative learning. The participants in this study consisted of the instructor, facilitators, and the students in a master's level course at a university in the south. Different sources of evidence were used in the study (individual/group…

Discussion boards have the unique capacity to support higher-order constructivist learning and the development of a learning community, This chapter provides ten conditions that support the effective use of an online discussion.

This study examined the effects of message constraints and labels on collaborative argumentation in asynchronous online discussions. Thirty-eight undergraduate students in an introductory educational technology course were assigned to one of three groups. In one group, students posted specific types of messages using a prescribed set of message…

Becoming a quality software developer requires practice under the guidance of an expert mentor. Unfortunately, in most academic environments, there are not enough experts to provide any significant design mentoring for software engineering students. To address this problem, we present a collaborative software design tool intended to maximize an…

Recognizing that school nurse leaders are essential to the development of school nurses, the North Carolina School Nurse Leadership Institute was developed to enable school nurse leaders to update and advance their leadership skills. The Institute was a collaborative endeavor between the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services,…

For online mathematics instructors, synchronous communication can be a challenge due to the need for specialized symbols, graphics, or notations to explain key concepts. While software tools exist to support such communication, they can often be cumbersome and time-consuming for users to adopt in online exchanges. As one way of addressing this…

In the past few years, an explosion of user-generated content has flooded the Internet. The dramatic drop in the cost of digital video equipment and the increased accessibility of the Internet create a unique opportunity to allow youth to create meaningful content. Today youth around the world can leverage technological tools to give voice to…

Since its unveiling in 2003, professors and college students have flocked to the virtual world of Second Life. Professors use Second Life to hold distance-education classes, saying that communication among students becomes livelier when they assume digital personae. Anthropologists and sociologists see the virtual world as a laboratory for…

This study clarifies whether secondary school students develop their argumentation skills through reading and collaboration. The students first constructed an individual argument diagram on genetically modified organisms, read three articles, and improved their diagrams. Next, they engaged in a chat debate, reflected on their debate by…

This paper presents the results of a content, frame and discourse analysis of Internet sites concerned with Asperger's syndrome (AS). It investigated blogs written by people who have been diagnosed with AS, as well as organizations devoted to the support of people with AS and their families. The findings document the different and even…

In this paper, we suggest that self-organized learning can be supported through emergent and informal Web technologies and propose that these technologies can be used to encourage similar practices in higher education. Self-organized learning aims at increasing individual control over instructional functions through a process that involves…

This paper reports on a study that explored the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties, the strategies that carers and professionals have used to support these activities and the implications these strategies may have for empowerment and self-advocacy. Content analysis of 15 home pages revealed that despite having a…