Hybrid communities using online and face-to-face communications to construct their practices are increasingly part of everyday life amongst people who have easy access to the internet. Researching these communities raises a number of challenges for researchers in the pursuit of ethical research. The paper begins by exploring what is understood by…

The discourse of social media adoption in higher education has often been funnelled through utopian and dystopian perspectives, which are polarised but determinist theorisations of human engagement with educational technologies. Consequently, these determinist approaches have obscured a broadened grasp of the situated, socially constructed nature…

Community colleges have long been institutions of higher education in the arenas of technical education and training, as well as preparing students for transfer to universities. While students are engaged in their student learning outcomes, projects, research, and community service, how have these students validated their work? One method of…

Although many international students experience transitional issues, most research assumes that these issues will disappear over time with increased interaction. Using principles of social network theory, this study addressed why some students become bridge builders between international and host students, while others primarily interact with…

Social network analysis (SNA), with its distinct perspective on studying relations and its exceptional capability to visualize data, should be embraced by institutional researchers as a promising new research methodology complementary to inferential and exploratory statistics. This article introduces SNA through discussion of three analytical…

The article will outline a framework for the use of social networking tools in K-12 education framed around four thought provoking questions: 1) what are the benefits and pitfalls of using social networking tools in P-12 education, 2) how do we plan effectively for the use of social networking tool, 3) what role does professional development play…

Effective professional learning for teachers is fundamental for any school system aiming to make transformative and sustainable change to teacher practice. This paper investigates the efficacy of Twitter as a medium for teachers to participate in professional learning by analysing the tweets of 30 influential users of the popular medium. We find…

Learning analytics, the analysis and representation of data about learners in order to improve learning, is a new lens through which teachers can understand education. It is rooted in the dramatic increase in the quantity of data about learners and linked to management approaches that focus on quantitative metrics, which are sometimes antithetical…

Purpose: During recent decades, research institutions have increased collaboration with other institutions since it is recognized as a good practice that improves their performance. However, they do not usually consider external collaborations as a strategic issue despite their benefits. The purpose of this paper consists of identifying different…

While highly cohesive groups are potentially advantageous they are also often correlated with the emergence of knowledge and information silos based around those same functional or occupational clusters. Consequently, an essential challenge for engineering organisations wishing to overcome informational silos is to implement mechanisms that…

Social cognitive mapping (SCM) is a common approach to identifying peer groups in developmental research. However, this approach involves three stages that each implies a unique conception of peer group. This article aims to bring conceptual clarity to the identification of peer groups using SCM by demonstrating how the meaning of peer groups…

Social network awareness (SNA) has been used extensively as one of the strategies to increase knowledge sharing and collaboration opportunities. However, most SNA studies either focus on being aware of peer's knowledge context or on social context. This work proposes online formative assessments with SNA, trying to address the problems of online…

Since information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon, in addition to its primary role in communications and networking, it has broadened to find applications in many other areas of science and technology, such as microeconomics, statistics, and neuroscience. This thesis investigates the application of information theoretic viewpoints to two…

Trust management in mobile networks is challenging due to dynamically changing network environments and the lack of a centralized trusted authority. In this dissertation research, we "design" and "validate" a class of dynamic trust management protocols for mobile networks, and demonstrate the utility of dynamic trust management…

Advances in digital networked communication technology over the last two decades have brought the issue of personal privacy into sharper focus within contemporary public discourse. In this dissertation, I explain the Fourth Amendment and the role that privacy expectations play in the constitutional protection of personal privacy generally, and…