This webtext describes a pilot course that united four first-year composition courses around shared readings and online discussion addressing the physical and virtual university. The goal of the pilot was to foster previously impossible student interactions by exploring how discrete discussion roles shaped interaction and reputations among…

A growing number of adult learners invest time, energy, and financial resources in completing online doctoral degrees. Several factors, other than the program itself, influence a person's decision to pursue a degree online. Many choose online learning because they are faced with challenges often typical for adult learners that prohibit them from…

Founded in 1988, Writers in Electronic Residence (WiER) is an educational and arts initiative that uses technology to connect students, teachers and Canadian authors as members of a creative writing community. Through on-line discussions that allow for a lively multi-party or many-to-many exchange, students and teachers in the classroom work with…

In the past, librarians relied solely on accredited children's awards, professional reviews from reputable journals and newspapers, and word of mouth from trusted sources to purchase materials. That "word of mouth" hasn't gone away. It has merely transformed itself into an electronic state. Blogs replace nothing and will never replace professional…

The Internet is increasingly being used as a tool for communicating and learning in primary schools across many developed and developing countries. The place of social chat as part of online interactions has as yet not been fully recognised as an important component of learning. In this paper, the interactions of students in a Sydney primary…

Today's new media tools are incredibly powerful communication vehicles that allow organizations to connect and engage with many different audiences. With more than seven million users, Twitter is growing at an annual rate of 1,382 percent, Facebook boasts over 250 million active members, and aspiring writers have started more than 133 million…

Much has been written about the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in distance learning environments. A quick Google search turns up as many as 178,000 links to the term. ICT has been less used and discussed as a means of communication between research student and supervisor--particularly where this is the major means of student…

Generating excitement about poetry is often a challenge with high school patrons. While some teens have discovered the cathartic and aesthetic qualities of poetry, many have never experienced the joy of poetry. A course the author took in 2003 at The University of Georgia with Dr. JoBeth Allen, "Poetry in the Classroom," ignited a…

Electronic communication is characteristically concerned with "the message" (eM), those who send them (S), and those who receive and read them (R). This relationship could be simplified into the equation eM = S + R. When this simple equation is applied to electronic communication, several elements are added that make this straightforward act of…

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters--modern perversions of "ars dictaminis" (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the…

This paper reports on a failed experiment to use Wiki technology to support student engagement with the subject matter of a third year undergraduate module. Using qualitative data, the findings reveal that in an educational context, social technologies such as Wiki's, are perceived differently compared with ordinary personal use and this…

Educators know that to engage learners in the enterprise of critical thinking, learner's need to care enough to pay attention, and feel safe enough to take intellectual risks. When interacting asynchronously in online forums, it can become even more challenging to create a space that encourages reflective, integrative, and higher order thinking.…

At the end of the last millennium, schools received strong competition from the Internet, multimedia and other developed electronic media thanks to the new possibilities for gathering, processing, searching for and sending information. Furthermore, young people and adults now travel a lot, and by travelling they also learn. Never before in the…

Sexual harassment has long been an unfortunate part of the climate in middle and high schools in the United States. Often considered a kind of bullying, sexual harassment by definition involves sex and gender and therefore warrants separate attention. The legal definition of sexual harassment also differentiates it from bullying. Based on a…

Various formats of online discussion have proven valuable for enhancing learning and collaboration in distance and blended learning contexts. However, despite their capacity to reveal essential processes in collaborative inquiry, current mainstream analytical frameworks, such as the cognitive presence framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer,…