In the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, staff and students at universities worldwide were forced to swiftly adapt to distance learning in order to continue with tertiary education. One of the main challenges we encountered during this period was a marked disconnect between staff and students, leading to lower motivation…

Drawing from an analysis of responses to COVID affecting the ECCE sector in the US, including the narratives of early childhood educators, we engage with several questions. These include: How is care work with children constructed and affected by COVID-19? How might current responses and policies be understood through the lens of social…

Nowadays, human life is greatly influenced by digitalization and informatization, which requires the reinterpretation of the matter of social formation and human development in the context of ontogenesis. From the moment of birth, a child lives in a mixed social and digital environment, which influences traditional socialization in one way or…

Socially relevant curriculum and the importance of opening up spaces for negotiation and 'meaning making' to occur are increasingly common ideas in my academic writing. In this article, I argue that cultural otherness, anti-racism, spirituality and religion are fundamental to contemporary socially relevant curricula. In it, I report how student…

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the nation, colleges and universities in Maryland canceled face-to-face classes and switched to teaching their courses online in mid-March. The following exploratory study examines how the Department of Strategic Communication at Morgan State University (MSU), the largest historically Black university in the…

The closing of schools due to COVID-19 has brought a dimension of uncertainty into STEM education. Despite the closing of schools due to the need to observe physical distancing, some schools have found ways to continue teaching and learning on virtual platforms enabled by increasingly pervasive fourth industrial revolution environments. In this…

While online student services became more relevant than ever amid the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, community colleges need to be proactive about alternative academic advising modalities. To respond to changing student needs and post-COVID-19 uncertainties, an equalized technology-mediated advising structure can increase advising accessibility,…

This study examines the effects of a virtual exchange on twelve teacher candidates of a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program. The teacher candidates participated in a 4-week virtual exchange with English as a Foreign Language learners from a university in Mexico. Throughout the exchange, the teacher candidates participated in…

This paper presents the results of an eight-week quasi-experimental study of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners at the tertiary level in Turkey. The purpose of the study was to reveal the extent to which EFL learners' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) was enhanced as a result of communication with native and non-native…

Synchronous online chatting has been mundanely employed in language classrooms as a supporting instructional medium. To explore the current state of research and inform future studies, this article examines the past studies on the use of Synchronous online text chatting in English as second/foreign language courses. Using frequently referred…

The widespread availability of educational technology has made online discussion forums (ODFs) an increasingly viable teaching resource, but teachers may lack guidance on approaches for making effective use of ODFs in their curricula. The current study reports on how an ODF was incorporated into a summative coursework assignment for an English for…

This quantitative study explored social media usage among college students attending urban public universities in the Southeastern U.S., focusing on their engagement with race-related issues online and examining whether this engagement was related to moral identity. Multiple regression analyses indicated that frequent social media use and race…

K-12 online students are increasingly communicating and collaborating with their peers; however, research on the topic is limited--especially research examining students' perceptions and experiences. Guided by the Adolescent Community of Engagement framework's concept of peer engagement, this qualitative descriptive case study examined…

In this paper, we examine the process of decomposition as well as the struggle for recomposition of academic labor, which we understand as a contradictory positionality within so-called "gig academy." Ours is a rhetorical intervention to, first of all, explicitly connect contemporary working conditions in academia to the general process…

In each of two studies, teachers were randomly assigned to either a Virtual Workshop (VW) group that used a computerized professional development program or an Actual Workshop (AW) group that participated in face-to-face professional development, including discussion, feedback, and collaboration. In both studies, teachers' posttest scores related…