Group projects have long been used in face-to-face instruction to improve cognitive learning among its students. Group projects not only provide practical experience and allow students to practice the concepts they have learned, but also teach the students creative construction and group dynamics. As important as group projects have proven in…

Having completed graduate degrees in educational research and counseling, I have studied the theory of focus groups and participated in many while in a classroom setting. Interestingly, I had never moderated one until my first attempt in a text-based online environment. This paper describes my preparation for the session as well as the issues I…

It's the end of an era in alumni relations. For many alumni associations, events and programs continue to have declining attendance and participation while the costs of offering them continue to increase. Social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 tools offer new ways to communicate with alumni, not to mention new ways for…

The authors discuss the notion of Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Building (RCKB) in classroom settings. RCKB seeks to harness the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, envision new possibilities, and to reveal latent knowledge in a dynamic live setting. It is characterized by the notion of rapid cycles of knowledge building activities…

Erving Goffman's concept of the gathering: the co-presence of two or more individuals in a common location in space and time. Research has shown that most gathering members assemble, remain and ultimately disperse together with one or more companions. "Singles" assemble and act alone but may intermittently interact with other "singles: or "withs"…

Groups are a fundamental part of the business world. Yet, as companies continue to expand internationally, a major challenge lies in promoting effective communication among employees who work in varying time zones. Global expansion often requires group collaboration through computer systems. Computer-mediated groups lead to different communicative…

This paper describes the development of augmented group awareness tools that take mutual user ratings of their online discussion contributions as input, aggregate these data, and visually feed these data back to the members in real time, thereby informing participants about how the group as a whole perceives their contributions. A specific group…