This article reports on an international study investigating university educators' ideas about the diversity of their students, carried out by using semi-structured email interviews. The information obtained from participants was analysed using a phenomenographic approach to obtain an outcome space, in which the narrowest conception ignored any…

The University of South Australia and Purdue University (Indiana) launched the "Grammar Gang Blog" in June 2008, as a collaborative forum for talking about language. The blog reaches a far-flung community of learners from Australia to the United States, Brisbane to Bangalore and Ghana to Germany. The Grammar Gang--where Owls meet…

Critical thinking is an essential competency in the new information age. But research shows that students commonly lack critical thinking skills and hence promoting students' critical thinking becomes crucial. This exploratory study investigated the extent to which secondary school students' critical thinking could be promoted by writing…

This research investigated how differently elementary school students participate in synchronous online collaborative learning by analysing their discussions with their partners. Two hundred and seventy-eight Taiwanese students, ranging in age from 11 to 12 years old, were involved in this study. The students were randomly arranged within-class…

This manuscript begins with a synthesis of research on communities, communities of practice (CoPs), and the potential for their development in online forums, while specifically discussing the value of virtual CoPs for educational professionals in higher education. Working within constructivist and sociocultural frameworks, this manuscript…

Online discussion groups have become a resource for teachers seeking ongoing professional development. Despite their popularity, there has been little systematic investigation into the nature and quality of the dialogue that occurs within an unstructured virtual community to which participants voluntarily subscribe. In this study, we explored how…

This study explores some possibilities of social network analysis for studying adolescents' communication patterns. A full network analysis was conducted on third-grade high school students (15 year olds, 137 students) in Belgium. The results pointed out that face-to-face communication was still the most prominent way for information to flow…

Given the explosive growth of online communications, new forms of discourse are an intriguing topic of study. This research focused on ten online discussions hosted by "The Chronicle of Higher Education," using content and discourse analysis of the postings to answer several questions. What is the "conversational scaffolding" used by posters in…

English as taught in city schools does not always reflect the Englishes city students travel with. Their urban English landscape is enriched by a procession of many voices that march in various directions in, around, and through the monuments of the city. These languages--Englishes, in this case--which have been traded on through various public…

Understanding instructors' perceptions of distance education transactions is becoming increasingly important as the mode of distance learning has become not only accepted, but preferred by many students. A need for more empirical qualitative data was evident as anecdotal information still dominates the research literature. The study focused on the…

Currently the news is awash with reports of high-profile corporate and political scandals and revelations around unethical work and corrupt practices. Unfortunately this shows little sign of abating with a very high proportion of young people displaying cynical and possibly corrosive attitudes around ethics in the work-place. It is clearly…

This chapter explores the potential of social networking sites for increasing student engagement for distance education learners. The authors present a modified student engagement model with a focus on the integration of technology, specifically social networking sites for community college distance education learners. The chapter concludes with…

In traditional introductory physics classes, there is often limited opportunity for students to contribute their own ideas, interests, and experiences as they engage with the subject matter. This situation is exacerbated in university lecture-format classes, where students may not feel comfortable speaking during class. In the last few years,…

The authors make a case for using wiki technology in qualitative research. A wiki is an online database that allows users to create, edit, and/or reflect on the content of a web page. Thus, wiki technology can support qualitative research that attempts to understand the shared thinking of participants. To illustrate the use of the wiki for this…

The purpose of this article is to reflect on how to break bad news. The style in which one breaks bad news at the collegiate level has implications both for the individual and for the institution. If not managed well by enrollment professionals, negative news can taint prospects, applicants, parents, and current students, blemishing the…