Empirical Education recently completed a study evaluating the implementation of Kami in Moreno Valley Unified School District. Kami is a productivity platform that students and teachers use to create, share, annotate, and collaborate on documents across all subject areas and grade levels. The correlational study was conducted using data from the…

This paper explores the ways ESOL writing instructors implement and assess participatory writing practices in the classroom using digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participatory writing practices are largely sociocultural in nature and thereby resist the notion of standardized and individualized practices to focus on co-creating a…

Purpose: With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and…

Talcott Parsons is often identified as the "master" of mid-twentieth-century social theory. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, his writings were hardly any longer discussed, but mostly neglected. "The American University" is Parsons's last monograph published during his lifetime. On the basis of extensive archival research, this…

This article proposes that in addition to training teams of students to succeed in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, the contest and the preparation for competition can be successfully used as a framework to teach an auxiliary skill set to undergraduate STEM majors through workshop-style modules. The skills emphasized are collaboration across…

This study investigated the dynamics between matched heritage language learner (HLL) dyads, second language learner (L2L) dyads, and mixed HLL-L2L dyads in the Spanish L2 classroom. Data come from 15-minute video recordings of 16 dyads, including four HLL-HLL, four L2L-L2L, and eight HLL-L2L dyads that were collected during collaborative writing…

The following is a qualitative study on Chinese international English language learners' (ELLs') experiences in an English as a second language (ESL) classroom. Set at Sunset University (pseudonym used), a public university in Northern California, the study uses ethnographic field methods to gauge information about an ESL teacher's and Chinese…

Aim/Purpose: In this study, the authors examine how an online word processing tool can be used to encourage participation among students of different language backgrounds, including English Language Learners. To be exact, the paper discusses whether student participation in anonymous collaborative writing via Google Docs can lead to more…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are among the high-impact practices described by AAC&U. We studied the long-standing First-Year Seminar Program at our public research university for the ways in which writing assignments--individualized for each seminar--help faculty and students achieve program objectives in critical and analytical thinking, the…

"Fable Writer" is an online reading, writing and research tool designed to facilitate synchronous, collaborative writing tool that enables learners to read and copy text and images from teacher-curated books and Web-based resources in the "Fable Reader" digital library. The "Fable Writer" project addressed two…

This case study reports on patterns of participation in a virtual collaboratory organised around goals associated with the involvement of graduate students in research and writing projects. Traditionally, distance learning classrooms have been devoted to teaching content matter (in a virtual context) yet this case study reports on the use of…

This study investigates the dynamics in the Spanish classroom between heritage language learner (HLL) dyads, second language learner (L2L) dyads, and mixed HLL-L2L dyads. Specifically, it examines oral, written and embodied discourse that informs our understanding of how learners attend to language. Analysis for this dissertation examined…

This article relies on year-long ethnographic data to examine how the intersection of peer status, gender, and race influenced the role stances children took in one urban fifth grade classroom while participating in three different pedagogies: peer tutoring, cooperative peer editing, and collaborative writing. Informed by the sociocultural…

This article discusses a participatory action research (PAR) project carried out with three transnational Latina youth in northern California and how the university researcher incorporated Chicana feminist strategies in the study. PAR and Chicana feminism place at the heart of research the knowledge that ordinary people produce, referring to this…

For the past several years, many have viewed wikis as useful tools for community building and collaboration. A number of free Web services such as PBwiki have claimed convenience and ease of use as part of their overall packages. A review of the literature reveals a great deal of anecdotal support for wiki use in the workplace. However, few…