One of the challenges of asynchronous online discussions is soliciting student responses that involve critical thinking. Too often students answer one another with "I agree" or "That's what I think" and the discussion dead ends. By providing students with models of good questioning techniques instructors will see the class…

This study aims to investigate Instant Messaging from the new rhetorical genre perspective. Considering IM as a primary genre (Bakhtin, 1986) I intend to examine its social motive and social and textual features. Also, using Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) concept of situated learning, I will explain how IM users learn the genre to communicate through it.…

Like most high schools, St. Mary's District High, Tasmania, Australia, has a regular annual orientation day for students in transition from Grade 6 to Grade 7. In 2000, an online element was introduced (by the author) to supplement this process for students moving to Grade 7 in 2001. Elementary classrooms are traditionally child-centered…

This 43-minute videotape is part of the on-going Internet education series exploring the fascinating resources of the Internet. It was produced directly for those in society that did not have computers growing up. One exceptional point of the video is its simple approach. It demonstrates World Wide Web, e-mail and other Internet applications.…

The Internet has provided the world with an almost instantaneous communication vehicle. The traditional approach to sharing academic publications has been to prepare written articles for submission to the appropriate journal, then wait for the 6-month to 2-year delay before publication. With these built-in delays from occurrence to publication,…

With the advent of new technologies, the possibility for providing quality, Internet-based, therapeutic counseling services becomes more attainable and realistic every year. Since the National Board for Certified Counselors announced the adoption of voluntary standards for the practice of Internet-based counseling, a new dimension has been added…

This paper discusses the need for and the design requirements of generic chatroom software that is readily configurable to particular domains and that is also extensible. The architecture of a client/server chatroom generation system, ChatterBox, implemented in Java, is presented. The following components of ChatterBox are described: (1) the basic…

The practice of weblogging--or "blogging," as it is popularly known--has gone through a series of growth spurts during the past four years. At present, a weblog is best defined as "a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page" (Blood, 2002b). Two recent developments, in particular,…

The premise of this document is that an optimistic view of the relationship between counseling and testing services is warranted in the new century. The document focuses on the integration of testing and counseling via the Internet. Advantages and concerns related to both e-mail interactions and chat and/or video-conferencing are considered. The…

This paper utilizes a model of technology-mediated interaction to highlight the importance of social interaction in the construction of a collaborative online learning community. Learning communities are built around relationships. There are many factors that impact on the ability of social interaction to create social comfort and the capacity for…

Rapid technological development in the last decade has made it easier than ever to use technologies as collaborative learning tools. Computer video conferencing as a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) technology brings learners closer to real-world environments and it provides increasing opportunities for learners to share…

It is assumed that cooperative learning continuously constructs and extends the shared knowledge of a group of learners with respect to a specific learning domain. Experiences with Computer-Supported Collaborative/Cooperative Learning (CSCL) environments indicate that an explicit representation of the shared knowledge is helpful with regard to two…

This paper discusses stigmergy (i.e., the effect of communication through the environment) in relation to the Internet, especially with regard to World Wide Web-based learning. The paper begins by examining ways in which stigmergy occurs on the Web and then goes on to describe its use in the construction of a continually evolving system, CoFIND…

The development and use of communication and information technologies, notably the Internet, have stimulated huge changes in the organization of work and daily life in Europe, leading to a process of transition from the "Industrial" to the "Information" society. The ultimate aim of the Information Society should be the…

This paper reports on a two-year exploratory study to determine the viability of voice-based threaded discussions forums as a means of stimulating discussion and understanding of weekly readings as part of a large undergraduate communications course. From March to June 2001, 600 students participating in a large introduction to communication…