Much is known about help seeking in face-to-face classrooms, but there is a limited understanding about how learners seek and provide help online. This study implemented a peer-help forum in an online technology course, and investigated students' engagement in the forum, their perceptions, and the relationship between peer help and course…

Framed from positioning theory and dynamic systems theory, the paper reports on a naturalistic study involving four Chinese participants and their American peers in an intercultural asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) activity. Based on the moment-by-moment analysis and triangulation of forum posts, reflective essays, and…

Prior research has shown that intermediate-level adult learners of Russian who worked interactively with partners using text chat improved their vocabulary and oral production skills more than students who worked independently (Tare et al., 2014). Drawing on the dataset from Tare et al. (2014), the current study follows up to explore the nature of…

This qualitative case study sought to understand the experiences of international college students who were involved in the acquisition of academic literacies (via an English-as-a-Second-Language writing class). Data sources included observation field notes; messages posted in an online discussion forum; transcripts of interviews with five focal…

With the adoption of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in educational institutions, a lot of data has become available describing students' online behavior. Many researchers have used these data to predict student performance. This has led to a rather diverse set of findings, possibly related to the diversity in courses and predictor variables…

This article aims to investigate how university students perform agency in an online course and whether the collaborative nature of the course affects such expression. A total of 11 online web forums involving 18 students (N = 745 posts in total) were qualitatively analysed through the use of a codebook composed of five categories (individual,…

Rigorous interaction between peers has been an elusive goal in online asynchronous discussions. Intersubjectivity, the goal of peer-to-peer interaction, is a representation of a higher quality of synthesis. It is the representation of knowledge construction achieved through a synergistic progression from individual contributions to sequences of…

With the increased use of social media there is a growing interest in using social interaction and social presence in education. Despite this phenomenon, no appropriate methodology was found on effective integrating of both concepts into online learning. In this study, we propose integrating two different kinds of learning tools to provide social…

The aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of counselling-based training on online peer support by comparing the interventions of trained peer supporters as opposed to non-trained peer supporters. Two independent raters analysed 746 support posts published during a period of one year at the "Student to Student" online peer…

This study explores the writing of Wikipedia articles as a form of authentic writing for learners of English in Hong Kong. Adopting "Second Language Socialization and Language Learning & Identity" approaches to language learning inquiry, it responds to an identified shortage of research on computer-mediated language socialization.…

This study investigates the use of face-to-face and computer-mediated peer review in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing course to examine how different interaction modes affect comment categories, students' revisions, and their perceptions of peer feedback. The participants were an intact class of 13 students at a Taiwanese university.…

In this paper, we draw on Actor-Network Theories (ANT) to explore how material components functioned to create gateways and barriers to a virtual learning network in the context of a professional development module in higher education. Students were practitioners engaged in family learning in different professional roles and contexts. The data…

This study investigates college student perceptions of instructor credibility based on the content of an instructor's Twitterfeed and student beliefs about Twitter as a communication tool. Quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to explore the effects of three manipulated Twitter feeds (e.g., tweeting social topics, professional topics,…

Erving Goffman's theoretical framework and concept of face-work has the potential to greatly increase the understanding of interpersonal dynamics in computer-mediated communication realms. This research used an ethnography of communication approach and the concept of face-work to analyze the transcript of an interaction between a librarian and a…

Given that Latinas/os make up the fastest-growing population group in the U.S., according to the 2000 U.S. Census, classroom teachers increasingly are in need of meaningful resources and learning strategies for students of Latin American heritage. These same resources can also serve to help internationalize/diversify classrooms serving non-Latino…