The discussion board feature that is included with most course management software packages is a potentially valuable tool to augment instructor-student interactions in science lecture courses and increase student motivation. However, many teachers seem to have been frustrated that students do not readily make use of this feature when it is added…

This case study investigates the effectiveness of online peer dialogue journaling. The authors developed this learning strategy for elementary preservice teachers to reflect on their tutoring experiences and to provide support to their journal partners using an Internet discussion forum. The participants were asked to fill in two questionnaires,…

This study documents literature discussions between groups of teacher education students in two geographically and demographically different universities. Students from an education methods course at each site discussed "The Friendship" by Mildred Taylor with one another as part of a distance reader response project. The project was designed to…

Even though social studies teachers may value discussion of controversial issues, such practice is rare in most social studies classrooms. Nystrand, Gamoran, and Carbonaro (1998) reported that 90 percent of the instruction they observed in more than one hundred middle and high school classes involved no discussion at all. What teachers cite as…

This article presents the first stage of a design-based research project to introduce case-based learning using existing interactive technologies in a major Australian university. The paper initially outlines the relationship between case-based learning, student interaction and the study of interactions--and includes a review of research into…

Topics like employment discrimination, personal jurisdiction, first amendment and copyright, are commonly taught in many legal environment and business law courses. Law faculty often seek to find new and interesting vehicles for helping their students to better understand and critically analyze these traditional legal concepts. Today's college…

This article addresses an impasse in debates about online education in university education. One side presents a story of the progressive development of technology as it is applied to the organisation of higher education, leading to pedagogical advances and to the new forms of administration required for the realisation of the technology's full…

A difficulty for faculty new to teaching at a distance is being able to visualize the scope of needed skills and tasks that will be required of them. The purpose of this project was to provide an empirically-based, self-administered skill enhancement guide for new distance education faculty teaching via interactive satellite broadcast. A modified…

In this paper we report findings of a multidisciplinary study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada and examine in detail three of the study's findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of "cyberculture values" as manifested in our…

This qualitative study explores the factors that contributed to limited interactional involvement in a telecollaborative project linking two groups of participants: 12 advanced-level students of English in northeastern Germany and 9 advanced-level students of German in the southwestern United States. Drawing on data from online transcripts,…

Recently a number of quasi-experimental studies have investigated the potential of a cross-modality transfer of second language competency between real-time, conversational exchange via text and speech (Abrams, 2003; Beauvious, 1998; Kost, 2004; Payne & Whitney, 2002). Payne and Whitney employed Levelt's (1989) model of language production and…

Active learning and research-oriented activities have been increasingly used in smaller, specialized science courses. Application of this type of scientific teaching to large enrollment introductory courses has been, however, a major challenge. The general microbiology lecture/laboratory course described has been designed to incorporate published…

This paper describes the components of a successful, online, introductory statistics course and shares students' comments and evaluations of each component. Past studies have shown that quality interaction with the professor is lacking in many online courses. While students want a course that is well organized and easy to follow, they also want to…

The realization of information and communication technology (ICT) literacy is a global and complex objective. It has been argued that it cannot be accomplished by single-focused, stand-alone curricula. Instead, it has been recommended that ICT education be integrated into the instruction of other disciplines to effectively promote technical…

This study systematically examines the strength of the connection between synchronous CMC and pragmatic instruction by measuring the effects of three types of synchronous group discussion (written chat [WC], oral chat [OC], and traditional face-to-face [FF] discussion) on the acquisition of the speech act (refusals of an invitation) in the target…