Examines 31 book club discussion guides prepared by major book publishers for book club readers to explore which particular ways of reading and discussing books they might sanction. Finds that they steer readers toward a rather narrow collection of academic reading practices (analytic and text-based) and away from other types of responses. (SR)

Evaluated the use of an online discussion group to strengthen preservice teachers' communication, inquiry, and reflection. Analysis of participants' dialogue indicated that the most important benefit was that practicum students placed at different grade levels communicated their observations and concerns in a non-evaluative setting. The paper…

Schools which enforce a no-smoking policy may experience lower rates of pupil smoking. Little is known, however, about how young people view such restrictions and it has been argued that smoking bans might actually encourage adolescent smoking. This paper presents pupils' views on the extent to which staff could, and should, enforce smoking…

A future-search conference is a participatory planning and decision-making process in which a group of individuals with diverse perspectives come together; engage in a process of data collection, discussion, and learning; and decide on an appropriate course of action. The competencies, skills, and intellectual capital developed as part of this…

This paper describes a final year biosciences module consisting of workshops to which web-based tools were introduced. The ability of the online tools to facilitate group work and assess the students was investigated. The online module was delivered via WebCT as the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). The initial concept was to enhance rather than…

As universities and history departments argue over how best to make history "relevant" to students of the twenty-first century, and as professors are increasingly under pressure to integrate technology into their courses, many questions remain unanswered as to the usefulness, reliability, and pedagogical soundness of the new and ever-changing…

As electronic resources for scholarship proliferate, more and more scholars turn to their computers rather than to print sources to conduct their research. The decentralized distribution of these new model works can make it difficult to fully appreciate their scope and number, even for university librarians tasked with knowing about valuable…

This article argues that in Britain dominant educational discourses of "the ideal pupil" exclude minority ethnic pupils and prevent them from inhabiting a position of authentic "success". It suggests that "the successful pupil" is a desired yet refused subject position for many minority ethnic young people--even for…

Per definition, CSCL research deals with the data of individuals nested in groups, and the influence of a specific learning setting on the collaborative process of learning. Most well-established statistical methods are not able to analyze such nested data adequately. This article describes the problems which arise when standard methods are…

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of an online educational experience through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Transcript analysis of online discussion postings and the Community of Inquiry survey were applied to understand the progression and integration of each of the Community of Inquiry presences. The results…

Providing tools for dialogue exchange does not ensure that students will respond to teammate postings or that online groups will grow in cohesiveness (Murphy, 2004). Students decide whether or not to reply, and it is increasingly important to understand how students make these decisions due to the increase in distance education, Millennials, and…

This article elaborates a model for understanding pedagogy in online educational forums. The model identifies four key components. Intellectual engagement describes the foreground cognitive processes of collaborative learning. Communication processes operating in the background accumulate an ever richer store of shared understandings that enable…

This longitudinal study compared business faculty's use of information technology in distance education as well as their perception of the technology's impact on their productivity and technology preferences between 2000 and 2006. Data were collected from 81 professors in 2000 and 140 professors in 2006 at AACSB-accredited business colleges across…

The aim of the present study was to investigate into the critical thinking skills of late adolescent Turkish university students. The subjects of the study were the 39 students from the Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance, Faculty of Education, Uludag University. Two separate discussion groups, each including five students, were…

Emergent leadership was examined in 12 discussion groups in 4 fourth-grade classrooms. Children's leadership moves were coded from transcripts of 10 free-flowing, open-format discussions of each of the 12 groups. The transcripts encompassed 26,000 turns for speaking, including 22,000 child turns of which 1,700 were judged to serve one of five…