This commentary discusses 4 issues relevant to interpretation of A. S. Green, E. Rafaeli, N. Bolger, P. E. Shrout, and H. T. Reis's (2006) article: (a) Self-reported compliance in medical settings has generally been substantially higher than verified compliance, suggesting that this is not a rare phenomenon; (b) none of the studies reported in…

The advent of electronic and digital communication as an integral part of academic discourse has profoundly changed the ways in which universities and their faculties pursue teaching and scholarship. Such changes are manifest in the methods by which information is obtained and disseminated, the means of storing and retrieving such information, and…

Achieving active participation has been argued to be an intrinsic part of learning and has become a central issue in debates on online education. This research examines whether an emerging synchronous communication medium, instant messaging (IM), may enable students in participating more actively in a distance learning course. In doing this, it is…

The digital materials that faculty produce for their classrooms often are saved only to storage devices that might become obsolete in a few years. Without an institutional effort to provide access systems, storage, and services for their digital media, are campuses in danger of creating "Disposable Scholarship"? In this article, the author…

Purpose: The increased pressure to incorporate communication technologies into learning environments has intensified the attention given to the role of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in academic settings. However, the issue of how and why these technologies, especially synchronous CMC applications, has been given less attention in…

Reports of teens and pre-teens stalked or abducted by predators who got personal information the students provided on websites like MySpace.com now worry many school officials. These popular websites let students write just about anything about themselves for the world to see. Many don't grasp that not only their friends and classmates are reading…

In this essay, the author describes the difficulties email has introduced to the academic world, from monopolizing faculty's down time to adding a new dimension to interpersonal problems. He discusses the "withdrawal" symptoms he felt when he decided to go without email during a family vacation, and his realization, upon examining the emails sent…

In its most basic form, a blog is simply a Web-based journal in reverse chronological order. It allows the writer to post ideas and thoughts quickly using conversational language for many to read. It allows the writer to link easily to other sites for support as well as for examples. And it provides a repository for such items. Also, both readers…

Teachers strive to establish partnerships with parents to support student learning. Strong communication is fundamental to this partnership and to building a sense of community between home and school. In these changing times, teachers must continue to develop and expand their skills in order to maximize effective communication with parents. This…

Knowledge, especially tacit knowledge, has gained more and more attention in recent years. The author claims that, with the development of information technology, more knowledge sharing takes place online rather than face-to-face. The purpose of this study is to explore how tacit knowledge is externalized in online environments. To answer this…

Young American adults are spending more and more time on activities like sending e-mail messages or blogging, and less time on books, the arts, politics, and their studies, with the result being that they are cut off from the worlds beyond their social circuit. Observers say that the disengagement of students from the liberal-arts curriculum is…

An increasing number of students are choosing online education programs to complete their higher education. Research concludes that student satisfaction and retention are related to program completion. Furthermore, research indicates that physical distance alone does not influence student satisfaction and retention. In this study, we examined…

This research shares the experiences of two colleagues who engaged in an e-mentoring relationship for a period of one academic term. Their candid and reflective comments are interspersed among the voices of the best practices literature. Mentoring is a traditional method of passing knowledge and skills on from an established professional to a…

Every learner is on a trajectory, an individual path that involves choices about what to do next in order to learn, choices that are bounded by intrinsic and extrinsic constraints. In some cases the learner controls those choices, sometimes they are made by someone or something else, sometimes control is negotiated, or it emerges from complex…

"Youth Online" chronicles the stories of young people from several countries--the US, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Holland--and their interactions in online communities over a seven-year period. It examines how young people construct their identities in various social contexts: social, fantasy, role-playing; and for various social…