This article reports on a phenomenological research study that was undertaken to provide cultural understanding about the nature of distance education experiences of Arab graduate students pursuing degree programs in the United States. As a theoretical framework, Hofstede's international difference dimensions and Hall's concept of low and high…

This article illustrates procedures for using e-journals as a creative and adjunctive approach in group work. Incorporating e-mail based journaling as an ancillary form of group interaction allows members to communicate via written channels, and creates new ways for clients to relate in the group. This article outlines how leaders can use…

It has often been suggested that education via the Internet, or e-learning, leads to a sense of separation in individual learners; this need not be the case. Teaching is a relationship: a relationship that is built on a connection between teaching and learner, between learner and learner, and between the learners and the content. What then is the…

Technology-enhanced knowledge mobilization can be extremely useful for helping practicing professionals keep abreast of research and development efforts in their field. The initiative described in this paper encourages collaboration among university and community partners to effectively use online learning and communications technology for…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that instructor performance in the online discussion portion of online courses has a major impact on learning and learner satisfaction. If this is the case, faculty development is an important component of success. This paper describes the development of a taxonomy of six categories to describe instructor postings to…

Despite good intentions and extensive planning by teacher education and/or induction programs, novice teachers frequently cite the first years as unsupported and lonely. Feelings of isolation and being overwhelmed help contribute to the large numbers of teachers leaving the profession. In fact, nearly 50 percent of all teachers will quit within…

This paper reports on research carried out on an intercultural telecollaborative exchange between language learners in Germany and Ireland and focuses particularly on what was required of the teachers in the development of the project. The review of the literature looks at the role of telecollaboration within the field of network-based language…

Ulises Mejias examines how social software--information and communications technologies that facilitate the collaboration and exchange of ideas--enables students to participate in distributed research, an approach to learning in which knowledge is collectively constructed and shared. During Fall 2005, Mejias taught a graduate seminar that provided…

While it has been suggested that patterning activities support early algebra learning, it is widely acknowledged that the shift from perceiving patterns to understanding algebraic functions--and correspondingly, from reporting empirical patterns to providing explanations--is difficult. This paper reports on the collaborations of grade 4 students…

Because rapid prototyping results in the quick development of curriculum, materials, and processes, it is a form of design that could be particularly useful to professors in higher education. Yet, literature documenting the use of rapid prototyping in higher education is scarce. This paper offers a case example of rapid prototyping being used as a…

The current paper builds on Reports #34 and 35 in this series, which discussed the use of collaborative software to develop online communities in distance education (DE). The paper illustrates the manner in which an educational community's needs should be carefully examined, in the process of designing techniques that fulfill these needs at a…

This article discusses the way online communications, and more precisely e-mail, can be used for English language teaching in a Primary Education classroom in Greece. The first part: (a) briefly describes the context where this particular technology will be used; (b) considers the pedagogical issues and language learning potential of using e-mail…

This study investigated the social network structure of booking officers at the Honolulu Police Department and how the introduction of an online discussion tool affected knowledge about operation of a booking module. Baseline data provided evidence for collaboration among officers in the same district using e-mail, telephone and face-to-face media…

This paper reports an investigation of cognitive styles, achievement scores and attitudes toward computers among university students. Field dependence/field independence is a dimension of cognitive style that has been researched with various student groups as well as with attitudes. Nevertheless, there appears to be a dearth of published research…

On-line collaboration is an instructional method that facilitates collaboration in an on-line learning setting. To promote effective collaboration, it is vital to reveal both the student's and the instructor's point of view pertaining to effective on-line collaboration. In this study, the effectiveness of a learning management system in on-line…