This book, aimed specifically at new or relatively new facilitators of online education or training courses, is a guide to learning the ground-breaking techniques and skills necessary to effectively facilitate online dialogue, community, and ultimately, education. The book offers a theoretical framework and practical guidelines to help online…

This article, the second in a two-part series, provides an overview of the literature regarding first-generation college students (FGCS), which has been largely based on studies of students in public universities. The author shares outcomes from structured dialogues with FGCS attending Christian universities. The students described how their…

This qualitative case study investigated the teaching strategies that improve science learning of African American students. This research study further sought the extent the identified teaching strategies that are used to improve African American science learning reflect culturally responsive teaching. Best teaching strategies and culturally…

This study examines whether and how online discussions used in learning situations help to develop interactive intercultural communication. Undergraduate university students in the US, Taiwan, and Israel engaged in an online discussion about gender stereotypes. This study examines their perceptions of the interactions. There were 31 undergraduate…

This study examines the relationship between two ways of measuring critical thinking in online discussion forums. The study proposes that the results from content analysis, a well-developed technique that is used to measure level of thinking and knowledge construction in online environment, would relate to the results from social network analysis,…

Multiple factors have influenced testing agencies to more carefully consider the manner and frequency in which pretest item data are collected and analyzed. One potentially promising development is judges' estimates of item difficulty. Accurate estimates of item difficulty may be used to reduce pretest samples sizes, supplement insufficient…

This study investigated students' learning style participation rate within a blended Family and Consumer Sciences Exploring Childhood constructivist secondary course using an exploratory quantitative approach with descriptive analysis, ANOVA testing, and contingency tables. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence inventory was used to determine…

This review is based on the experience of an adjunct professor teaching in the Walden University online MSED Science (K-8) program. The program described by Walden University and the actual implementation of the science component of the program as experienced by the Professor will be presented. The program, while a noble attempt at a completely…

Only about half of new teachers report that they feel prepared to teach reading when they enter the profession. This research study focused on six elementary teacher candidates enrolled in a reading methods course combined with a reading practicum. The teacher candidates participated in an ongoing collaborative community discussion group…

An emerging trend in classrooms is the use of networked visual argumentation tools that allow students to discuss, debate, and argue with one another in a synchronous fashion about topics presented by a teacher. These tools are aimed at teaching students how to discuss and argue, important skills not often taught in traditional classrooms. But how…

Despite the abundance of research reporting authentic, student-centered classroom discussion helps to increase engagement with literary texts and deepen students' understanding of texts, little authentic, student-centered discussion actually occurs in secondary US English classrooms. Reasons for this vary, but some classroom language researchers…

In the classroom, issues including 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq often bring affective and cognitive investments among students and teachers to the forefront. Dialogue, conflicting viewpoints, and critical questioning, all central components of healthy democracies, become fraught with allegiances to long-held and frequently unseen norms. This…

The purpose of this article is to examine the communication behaviors of online leaders, or those who influence other members of online communities in triggering message replies, sparking conversation, and diffusing language. It relies on 632,622 messages from 33,450 participants across 16 discussion groups from Google Groups that took place over…

The goal of this study was to assess the effects of a school-based smoking prevention programme that used both a video and peer-led discussion groups among Romanian junior high school students aged 13-14 years. The programme embraced the social influence approach and concentrated on enhancing self-efficacy and the acquisition of cigarette refusal…

When it comes to helping others learn, there is a simple piece of advice that is often recommended to educators: Show! Don't tell. While appealing to the visual learning style of an audience is always a good idea, there is a growing expectation for more than just static images. They want video, which can deliver more dynamic presentations with…