In online learning at scale, wherein instructional videos play a central role, interactive tools are often integrated to counteract passive consumption. For example, the forum or discussion board is widely used, and an emerging functionality, danmaku, which enables messages to be synchronized with video playback, has also been utilized recently.…

Collaborative learning environments that support students' problem solving have been shown to promote better decision-making, greater academic achievement, and more reasonable argumentation about controversial issues. In this research, we developed a technology-based critical discussion platform to support middle school students' argumentation,…

Integration of blended learning environments into the learning process of teacher training may lead to the realization of an educational vision of creating a collaborative learning environment, with the aim to develop social-emotional skills and establish a learning community. The research question of this study was: What are the factors that…

This paper describes a research study that investigated foreign language students' collaborative practice in a blended, authentic learning environment. A group of intermediate and advanced level students of Italian at an Australian university interacted and collaborated with each other and with a group of native speaker mentors through a web-based…

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model provides a well-researched theoretical framework to understand how learners and teachers interact and learn together in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Most CoI research focuses on asynchronous learning. However, with the arrival of easy-to-use synchronous communication tools the relevance of…

This article investigates the effect of participation in synchronous online discussions on the development of individual reasoning as manifested in reflective essays. Students from a fourth-grade classroom engaged in a series of real-time online discussions. The format of the discussion was based on the Collaborative Reasoning approach which has…

Net-based collaborative learning discourses often suffer from deficiencies such as lack of coherence and coordination. It is suggested that the provision of two functionalities, referencing and typing, which learners may optionally use to ground their contributions during a chat-based discourse, can improve collaborative learning. In particular,…

CSCL systems which follow the dual-interaction spaces paradigm support the synchronous construction and discussion of shared artifacts by distributed or colocated small groups of learners. The most recent generic dual-interaction space environments, either model based or component based, can be deeply customized by teachers for supporting…

In order to collaborate effectively in group discourse on a topic like mathematical patterns, group participants must organize their activities in ways that share the significance of their utterances, inscriptions, and behaviors. Here, we report the results of a ethnomethodological case study of collaborative math problem-solving activities…

Argumentative activity has been found beneficial for construction of knowledge and evaluation of information in some conditions. Many theorists in CSCL and some empiricists have suggested that graphical representations may help in this endeavor. In the present study, we examine effects of type of ontology and of synchronicity in students that…

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…

This paper compares the processes of Face-To-Face (FTF) teams and Online Learning Teams (OLTs) and proposes methods to improve the performance of OLTs. An empirical study reviewed the performance of fifteen FTF teams and OLTs and their communication patterns were coded by the TEMPO system developed by Futoran et al. (1989) in order to develop a…

For the thirty-sixth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…

The authors work as online tutors for a BSc (Hons) physiotherapy programme at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. This paper represents a stage in our developing understanding, over a 3 year period, of the impact of group dynamics on online interaction among physiotherapy students engaged in sharing with their peers their first experiences…