This paper reports on findings from a study that examined students' online asynchronous discussions in five online courses on qualitative research methods. Online asynchronous discussion data from 22 students in 5 courses over a period of two years were analyzed iteratively, revealing two themes: (1) patterns of writing in students' posts that…

The purpose of this article is to investigate preservice teachers' (PSTs') perceptions about the features that facilitated their learning and engagement in asynchronous online discussions. Participants included 12 PSTs enrolled in an online classroom management course at a public university in New England. Using constructivist grounded theory…

This article explores the perspectives of seven teachers in England who teach pupils with severe profound and multiple learning difficulties about their learning to teach this group of students. Teachers' views were captured through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous online communications. Four themes emerged from teachers' perspectives…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how students enact "responsibility" and "generativity" through their comments in asynchronous online discussions. "Responsibility" referred to discourse markers indicating participants' sense that their contributions are required in order to uphold their…

The article explores how the Internet and email offer space for participants to think and make sense of their experiences in the qualitative research encounter. It draws on a research study that used email interviewing to generate online narratives to understand academic lives and identities through research encounters in virtual space. The…

In this qualitative study, we analyze postgraduate students' perceptions of strategic behaviors they developed during their online studies and their ability to extend this behavior to their own praxis. Findings suggest that strategic behavior centers around the development of four core skills: engaging in self-directed thinking; fostering…

This paper presents a qualitative investigation on key skills for co-learning and co-inquiry in the digital age. The method applied was cyber-ethnography with asynchronous observation (forum and wiki) and synchronous discussions (webconference) for analysing skills developed by a co-learning community. This study focuses on participants from…

The purpose of this paper is to examine a specific online pedagogical tool, "Digital Moments" that can be an effective strategy for building online communities in a knowledge building environment. While the paper will examine the specific techniques and teaching methodologies that enabled the authors to create authentic online learning…

The ability to convert face-to-face curricula into rigorous and equally rich online experiences is a topic of much investigation. In this paper, we report on the conversion of a face-to-face research mentor training curriculum into a synchronous, online course. Graduate students and postdoc participants from the Center for the Integration of…

Time takes on a different character when online teachers take advantage of the possibilities for interactions occurring over different scales of time. Online teachers' pedagogical link-making can help students see links between ideas across individual postings so that meaning making becomes cumulative and progressive. This article reports on a…

Online communication is increasingly used in education, but it is not without problems. One significant difficulty is a lack of social presence. Social presence relates to the need for users of technology-based communication to perceive each other as real people. Low social presence can be a particular issue in text-based, asynchronous systems…

The purpose of this study was to examine what it is to be a mother and a band director from the perspectives of 15 women. The researcher hoped to create a document which will be helpful to band directors who are or who someday may become mothers. According to statements made in the Band Director Group on Facebook, there is a need for a sense of…

Research is limited on how metacognition is facilitated and manifested in socially situated online learning environments such as online discussion forums. We approached metacognition as the phenomenon of interest partly through a methodological objective to evaluate the relevance of a metacognition construct and partly through a content objective…

In an effort to expand existing research on the barriers of instructors experience in online learning environments (OLEs), a qualitative study was conducted at a large mid-Atlantic university. Six instructors teaching in different OLE formats (e.g., asynchronous, hybrid, and synchronous via videoconferencing) participated in two focus groups in…

In this article I report the findings of a descriptive and interpretative qualitative study carried out in a public school in Bogotá, Colombia. The study aimed at analyzing, describing and exploring teenage students' social identity representation as observed in their participation in a learning community on Facebook. Data were collected from…