This article describes how fifth-grade students created collaborative online learning communities while discussing and responding to literature on an asynchronous message board. At their own initiative, students constructed and posted various types of literature response prompts, which elicited rich responses from their peers. Types of identified…

Research on asynchronous online discussions has primarily focused on their efficacy in relation to learning outcomes. Rarely are there investigations on how the design of online learning activities or how discussions could be incorporated into student learning experience. We contend that successful online activities need careful and meticulous…

Pre-service teachers' perceptions of their own learning are important to the ways they integrate technology into their practices. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the pre-service teachers' perspectives of asynchronous discussion board (ADB) as a tool of learning to teach. ADB was integrated into two literacy courses for 33…

Theory of distributed cognition unveils the answer to what constitute distributed cognition. However, how the distributed cognition in web-based learning environment spreads out still remains a black box. This study sought to deepen our understanding on how learners' knowledge disseminates online by examining the impacts of three kinds of…

In this article, the author challenges English teachers of literature to examine applications of reader response theory in teaching reading which posit that readers approach a text from two stances: "aesthetic" (emotional) or "efferent" (literal). The essay presents a case study of pre-service English teachers and adolescents'…

This paper explores a middle school teacher's and his students' perceptions of the differences between online synchronous literature discussions and face-to-face literature discussions. Each member of this literature group participated in two face-to-face and two online literature discussions. Participants were interviewed twice to discuss their…

This book is provided as a guide, encouragement and handbook for faculty to introduce digital media in language they can understand and provide strategies and activities they can quickly assimilate into their teaching. The authors are excited that more people will be able to benefit from the powerful help and guidance contained in this book. This…

A decade ago, before the tech boom collapsed and the digital economy bubble burst, it seemed to some that issues surrounding information technology (IT) might be central to the politics of the early 21st century. But after September 11, 2001, with so much else on everyone's minds, "digital politics" seemed a boring sideshow. Technocrats,…

The causal relationships among the three presences in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are explored and tested in this paper. The CoI framework has been used extensively in the research and practice of online and blended learning contexts. With the development of a survey instrument based on the CoI framework, it is possible to test the…

This paper investigates the complex interactions that occur as teachers meet online to justify and negotiate their assessment judgements of student work across relatively large and geographically dispersed populations. Drawing from sociocultural theories of learning and technology, the technology is positioned as playing a role in either…

This article used work from the writing assessment literature to develop a framework for assessing the impact and perceived value of written, audio, and combined written and audio feedback strategies across four global and 22 discrete dimensions of feedback. Using a quasi-experimental research design, students at three U.S. universities were…

Professional teacher communities appear to be positively related to student learning, teacher learning, teacher practice and school culture. Teacher collaboration is a significant element of these communities. In initial teacher training as well as in-service training and other initiatives for teacher learning, collaborative skills should be…

Teachers are searching for new venues through which they may meet stringent professional development requirements. Under competitive funding from NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Office of Education and the NASA Explorer Schools Project, U.S. Satellite Laboratory, Inc. created a series of live, online, interactive…

We conducted research within a program serving future mathematics and science teachers. Groups of teachers worked primarily online in an asynchronous discussion environment on a 6-week task in which they applied learning-science ideas acquired from an educational psychology course to design interdisciplinary instructional units. We employed an…

This document was produced by the authors based on their research for the report "Building Learning Communities: Partnerships, Social Capital and VET Performance." It provides regional summaries and the "facts and flavour" for each of the following areas: (1) Restructuring Rural Landscape (Wide Bay Burnett, Queensland); (2)…