Educators need insight into what instructional strategies are effective in the online environment, but few researchers have contrasted threaded discussion strategies and measures of student performance using a quantitative approach. Also, the effectiveness of threaded discussion strategies across all student generation groups or between genders is…

Background: An important element in the experiences of people with autism is the key role played by therapeutic interventions. This paper examines the role of therapeutic intervention and the construction of individuals with autism in the therapeutic relationship. Method: The contributions to four online asynchronous discussion lists were analysed…

Because of an absence of dialogue, a tense relationship appears to exist between Wisconsin's gay men's book discussion groups and their local public libraries. Public library directors express interest in accommodating these groups if approached but face budget restrictions and local communities that may oppose these gatherings; gay men's book…

In September, 1958, The Canadian Education Association (CEA) hosted a panel discussion on the current status and emerging requirements of educational research in Canada. The panelists' comments are firmly rooted in the context of the 1950s. Half a century later, Penny Milton, CEO of CEA, takes a look at their comments and suggestions. This article…

Good preschool education requires professionals whose training is both solid and updated. This article presents the results of an evaluation of the continuing training received by teachers in the preschool educational sector in Spain, and discusses the level of implementation. The authors examine factors such as culture and motivation, and look…

Online discussions have been widely utilized as an educational activity, and much research has been conducted on the process and behaviors involved in asynchronous discussions. However, research on behavioral patterns in learners' synchronous discussions, including the process of social knowledge construction and project coordination is limited.…

This study is concerned with the challenge of understanding what factors may influence students' higher level knowledge construction. We defined higher level knowledge construction occurrences as the sum of the number of phases II to V measured using Gunawardena et al.'s (J Educ Comput Res 17(4):397-431, "1997") interaction analysis model. This…

Designing standardized exams for EFL undergraduates is a matter of great concern in pedagogical practices that assess learners' academic achievements. This case study was conducted at Majmaah University, Saudi Arabia, to explore the significance of educational exam standardization and its impact on the process of implementation, leading to a…

The purpose of this case study was to determine the functions of pre-service teachers' talk and to explore how the teacher educator supports the development of conceptual understanding in a dialogic classroom setting. The participants in the study were a physics teacher educator who employed dialogic teaching to teach mechanics and 52 third-year…

We report on a study evaluating the educational opportunities that highly multimodal and interactive Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) provide for collaborative learning in the context of interpreter education. The study was prompted by previous research into the use of VLEs in interpreter education, which showed positive results but which…

The dialogic nature of human beings has widely been argued in the scientific literature. Language, as a cultural and psychological tool, has the potential to construct social meanings, including those related to love, attraction and desire. In these emotional dimensions of the self, people use 'the language of desire', defined as the capacity of…

Engaged learning communities are deemed to be important when scholars consider whether students are retaining the information being delivered in classrooms. The increase in online formats makes it even more challenging to ensure that students feel engaged and that classes are being taught in ways that meet learning outcomes and align with how…

Employing a CA-inspired methodological approach, this study investigates L2 learners' interactional competence for dyadic interaction via text chat. Fifty-three dyads of Japanese learners of English at three proficiency levels (high, mid, and low) participated in this study, where they worked on three discussion tasks in L2 English. The data were…

This small case study investigated the use of the Quality Talk framework to empower students to pool their knowledge in group discussions around a novel topic or event. The main goals of the Quality Talk approach were to provide teachers with a prescriptive framework for increasing their students' critical-analytical thinking by providing greater…

Emoji are commonly used in social media to convey attitudes and emotions. While popular, their use in educational contexts has been sparsely studied. This paper reports on the students' use of emoji in an online course forum in which students annotate and discuss course material in the margins of the online textbook. For this study, instructors…