Infographics exist on nearly any topic you can imagine, proliferating in the digital age with social media. As this genre continues to explode in the business scene, business and professional communication instructors can no longer ignore showing their students infographics. After first defining the genre and outlining how it situates itself…

Universities are now observed using social media communications channels for a variety of purposes, including marketing, student recruitment, student support and alumni communication. This paper presents an investigation into the use of the Twitter social media platform by universities in Australia, using publicly available Twitter data over a…

The ability to argue well is a valuable skill for students in both formal and informal learning environments. While many studies have explored the argumentative practices in formal environments and some researchers have developed tools to enhance the argumentative skills, the social argumentation that is occurring in informal spaces has yet to be…

Course instructors across a wide range of disciplines have implemented computer-based learning resources such as online discussion boards. While the benefits of implementing an online discussion board in teaching have been well-documented, investigation into the social aspects of online learning environments is still needed in order to develop a…

This purpose of this investigation was to review the postings of candidates completing student teaching using an online discussion module. A total of 3624 on-line postings by 295 student teachers over eight semesters were examined. Postings were grouped into one of six categories (general information, teaching, students, placements, projects and…

In this paper a case of synchronic layering is examined in which Dutch "massa" ("mass") and plural "massa's" ("masses") are attested with lexical uses as a collective noun, quantifying uses ("a large quantity of") and intensifying uses ("very")--with plural "massa's" only--in some Flemish varieties of Dutch. Against the background of…

This article proposes a three-part conceptualisation of the use of Facebook in ethnographic research: as a tool, as data and as context. Longitudinal research with young adults at a time of significant change provides many challenges for the ethnographic researcher, such as maintaining channels of communication and high rates of participant…

We approach the construct of social presence (SP) from a socio-cultural perspective, taking it as an essential component of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) process. We present a qualitative case study in which sixteen student-teachers carried out a computer supported collaborative writing activity in small groups during six weeks.…

Discussion has long been identified by many in the field of social studies education as one of the most important elements of social studies instruction. However, many classroom teachers face several challenges in implementing the strategy. As a way to combat these challenges and encourage the use of discussion in American's classrooms, the…

Reminiscing--"the act or process of recalling the past (Butler, 1963, p. 66)"--is a core activity for any society. Research shows that the desire and tradition for reminiscing can be traced back to early civilizations where the elders of the community were responsible to know and share the history of their community (Butler, 1995;…

Through the case of one online disputant, Minerva, this study intended to see the possibilities of online communities as the public sphere. Minerva's postings and comments were analyzed using discourse analysis and ground theory. It was found that the online community did act as the public sphere at that time, such as setting agenda and developing…

Virtual teams are utilized by organizations to gather experts to collaborate online in order to accomplish organizational tasks. However, the characteristics of these teams create challenges to effective collaboration and effective team outcome. Collaboration is an essential component of teamwork, the notion of forming teams in organizations is…

The 21st century has allowed for endless possibilities in the areas of technology and technological innovations. Access is unlimited and society as a whole is benefiting from the abundance and availability, from private sectors to public. This access is truly tremendous as it continues to make many advances in areas such as medicine and education,…

In the last couple of years, a new aspect of online social networking has emerged, in which the strength of social network connections is based not on social ties but mutually shared interests. This dissertation studies these "curation-based" online social networks (CBN) and their suitability for the diffusion of electronic word-of-mouth…

Learning analytics can promote pedagogically informed use of learner data, which can steer the progress of technology mediated learning across several learning contexts. This paper presents the application of analytics to a mobile learning solution and demonstrates how a pedagogical sense was inferred from the data. Further, this inference was…