The development of digital technologies increases the use of distance synchronous (real-time) interactions among people. The study explores whether the "readiness to participate", the degree of "actual participation", and the "quality of contribution" to synchronous online group discussions is affected by participant…

Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in…

This research applies multimedia technology to design a dynamic item generation method that can adaptively adjust the difficulty level of items according to the level of the testee. The method is based on interactive testing software developed by Flash Actionscript, and provides a testing solution for users by automatically distributing items of…

Preparing the technology proficient learners to meet the needs of 21st century has emerged as a critical challenge facing education in our country. The teacher has to prepare the young generation to fit in to the technology intensive society of the 21st century. Instructional design (ID) is the systematic process of planning events to facilitate…

Urban Literacies showcases cutting-edge perspectives on urban education and language and literacy by respected junior and senior scholars, researchers, and teacher educators. The authors explore--through various theoretical orientations and diverse methodologies--meanings of urban education in the lives of students and their families across three…

This dissertation examines the composition process of three experienced professors who spent a semester designing instructional videos to be delivered online to students. The growing adoption of online education, in conjunction with the dominance of the screen in everyday communication, has required university educators to develop strategies for…

When the author started working with teachers and students on classroom multimedia productions a little over 10 years ago, he had not yet encountered the term "media literacy", nor did he realize he had joined a long standing international movement of media literacy educators. Serendipitous exposure to "old-media" texts by Neil Postman and Noam…

People don't just live in a material world anymore. They live in a digital world. Today's students have grown up with technology and the Internet. Like most people, they cannot thrive in their daily lives without the use of a digital device. In this article, the author suggests that teachers match their teaching strategies to the learning styles…

The aim of this article is to present the findings from a small exploratory case study of an open course on cyberpunk literature conducted at the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), an online grass-roots organisation that runs non-accredited courses. Employing actor network theory to inform an ethnographic-inductive approach, the case study sought to…

Online students often experience feelings of isolation and a lack of a sense of community from the institutions they attend (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). However, by implementing a variety of multimedia tools into the online classroom, students can hear and possibly even see their instructors. In this present study, a combination of live video…

This case study explores how strategy-based instruction (SBI), assisted by multimedia software, can be incorporated to teach beginning-level ESL learners metacognitive writing strategies. Two beginning-level adult learners participated in a 10-session SBI on planning and organizing strategies. The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach…

The aim of this mixed methods research study was to examine the construction of adolescents' bi-cultural identities through an exploration of their social practices on the social networking site, Ning. More specifically, we ask: (1) how are new Canadian and first-generation adolescents' bi-cultural identities shaped and performed as they use…

Wikis (websites that can be edited quickly by multiple authors) were used with upper-primary school children to write group reports on a science topic. Two teachers observed the children working, and their observations were used alongside the texts from the wikis and group interviews with children to explore the question of whether using wikis…

This study aims to examine the level of multimedia usage among Islamic education lecturers at higher education institutions in West Sumatera, Indonesia. The participants were chosen from three types of higher institutions by using stratified random sampling. The data was collected from 250 students using questionnaires. The findings showed that…

Since online educational technology can support a ubiquitous language learning environment, there are many ways to develop English learners' autonomy through self-access learning. This study investigates whether English as a second language (ESL) learners can improve their oral proficiency through independent study by using online self-study…