A five-year longitudinal study of undergraduate use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) found that student attitudes were stable, despite technological change; student expectations had increased; and student utilization of CMC was still primarily for course-related information. The study concluded that CMC can be best used as a complement…

Describes how beginning language learners generated electronic mail in a foreign language, Spanish, and what the resulting texts looked like. The study uncovered different, contrastive writing behaviors and a diversity of texts and suggests that communicative activities in the language classroom pose dilemmas for students. (39 references)…

Describes efforts by Fairmont State College (West Virginia) librarians to use electronic mail and a listserv to instruct registrants in a multipart Internet seminar. The development, implementation, and subsequent evaluation of the program are discussed, along with the advantages and disadvantages of computer-mediated communication as the sole…

Children's television personality Fred Rogers describes an experimental e-mail program in which children were invited to express their concerns about school. He discusses the drawbacks of computers, as well as the benefit of interactivity, and emphasizes the importance of the teacher-child relationship. (AEF)

Describes an approach that uses an electronic bulletin board in a large class to promote cooperation and interactivity among students both inside and outside the classroom. Concludes that this approach facilitated student-student and student-professor interactions, improved the quality of instruction, and produced a more learning-friendly…

This study examined how electronic mail (e-mail) affected communication and learning among student teachers and between students and instructors, comparing e-mail with more traditional communications. Surveys, interviews, and e-mail messages indicated that e-mail helped students meet course requirements and maintain student-instructor contacts.…

Examines how the Internet serves the scientific research community. Highlights include collaboration and large group communication via e-mail; USENET discussion groups; advantages of the World Wide Web and software-based simulations; changes in information storage; and benefits and problems of electronic publishing and online journals. (AEF)

Discusses logistics and design of an interactive teaching environment at Nova Southeastern University (Florida). Design elements include preparing instructional materials; monitoring progress; raising teacher awareness; support for learning; questions and answers via e-mail; timeliness of class participation; assessing student readiness; real-time…

Provides guidelines for the organization of information (tables of contents, headings, grouping, URLs--Uniform Resource Locators--and e-mail tags) and the construction of a Web page (size considerations, concision, spelling, file dates, e-mail links, visual appeal, link relevance, copyrights). Includes source code for a sample lesson page and…

Describes teaching freshman composition and rhetoric via e-mail as a distance education course at Tomball Community College (Texas). Discusses student and instructor responsibilities, e-mail procedures, problems encountered (lack of time, and managing disk and mailbox space), and benefits (reduced paper use, typed corrections, accurate records,…

Reports on a study in which five undergraduate education majors mentored six at-risk middle school science students using real-time (synchronous) chat technology. Results of the analysis indicate that the participating middle school science students, over the course of the project, asked more thoughtful questions, remained on task, and perceived…

Research suggests electronic mail can be a powerful motivator for authentic second language (L2) interaction, but little is known about the efficacy of this medium in the development of target language proficiency. This study examines Email exchanges between university learners of Japanese as a foreign language and native Japanese university…

Discusses college students' Internet use based on the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Focuses on general uses, including email, browsing, and music downloads; educational uses, including communicating with professors and information searching; and how college social life has been changed, including online communication with friends. (LRW)

Provides an overview of electronic mail in libraries. Topics discussed include general business applications; interlibrary loan; acquisition and claims systems; document delivery; complete text journal databases; reference requests and answers; obstacles to electronic mail usage; telecommunications; cost factors; and the impact of voice mail and…

Discussion of the use of electronic networks for learning activities highlights the Noon Observation Project in which students in various locations measured the length of a noontime shadow to determine the earth's circumference. Electronic pen pals are discussed, and the roles of the network and of the class are described. (LRW)