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,…

Due to the predominance of test-oriented practice, one major challenge faced in Japanese high school classrooms is the lack of learning activities to develop higher order thinking. The purpose of this action research study was to explore an extracurricular blended learning program created to develop the higher order thinking of English language…

This article explored written reflections of synchronous learning by students in a large (N=185) online literacy studies graduate course. The design of the webinar sessions and an intentional dialogic approach were fostered across live group webinar sessions to provide platforms for student voice and non-hierarchical knowledge sharing amongst…

With the rapid growth of online learning at community colleges and the low course completion and performance associated with it, there has been increasing need to identify effective ways to address the challenges in online teaching and learning at this setting. Based on open-ended survey responses from 105 instructors and 365 students from…

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…

A large proportion of students in higher education report feeling bored during lectures, for example, Mann and Robinson (2009) put this figure at 60 per cent. This short article reviews our experiences of using a simple, free Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, Skype, to enhance the interest and engagement of students by holding a…

The increasing number of external students enrolling at Charles Darwin University has led to the university investing in new technologies to provide better support for students studying online. Many students, however, come from non-traditional backgrounds and lack some of the skills and confidence to participate successfully in an e-learning…

Online fora have become not only one of the most popular communication tools in e-learning environments, but also one of the key factors of the learning process, especially in distance learning, as they can provide to the students involved, motivation for collaboration in order to achieve a common goal. The purpose of this study is to analyse data…

This study investigated how the different discussion approaches in Facebook influenced students' scientific knowledge acquisition and the nature of science (NOS) views. Two eighth- and two ninth-grade classes in a Taiwanese junior high school participated in the study. In two of the classes students engaged in synchronous discussion, and in the…

There has been an unquestionable upsurge in distance education in recent years. Given this, it is extremely important to understand the experience of online courses from students' perspectives. The purpose of the current qualitative study is to understand student attitudes about distance education in a specific context, namely that of a…

The aim of the research is to compare the impacts of telementoring services, delivered using chat with video, chat with instant message, mobile phone, discussion board and video conference on proteges' academic achievements and opinions. Telementoring services, made up with five different instruments, were administered to a group of proteges,…

We report about an active learning demonstration designed to use a virtual class to present computer-mediated group communication course concepts to show that students can learn about these concepts in a virtual class. We designated 1 class period as a virtual rather than face-to-face class, when class members "attended" virtually using…

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…

We examined a novel formative assessment and instructional approach with 89 students in three electrical engineering classes in special computer-based discussion sections. The technique involved students individually solving circuit problems online, with their real-time responses observed by the instructor. While exploratory, survey and…