At the beginning of my academic journey I held the belief that I would learn to teach simply by teaching. To my dismay, I had underestimated the complicated nature of teaching in higher education and gave little consideration to the ways students learn. Feeling overwhelmed by my situation, I began questioning my teaching practices and student…

This study investigated communication patterns and behavior in problem-solving groups in a graduate online course. An inductive qualitative analysis method was employed to analyze 732 messages that were retrieved from small group forums. The current study identified a temporal pattern of group development was in comparison with existing…

Recent changes in the higher education landscape have called for greater access and accountability in a number of areas, most particularly distance learning. While there is a very significant instructional aspect to this equation, providing effective support and services to students enrolled in online education is becoming comparatively important,…

Teenage Internet users are the fastest growing segment in the Internet user population. These teenagers are at risk of sexual assault from Internet predators. This phenomenological study explored teacher and counselors' perceptions of how to prevent this sexual assault. Twenty-five teacher and counselor participants were interviewed. A…

A representative sample of approximately 2,000 public school principals in the Midwestern United States were surveyed about school policies and practices to prevent cyberbullying. They were also asked to interpret whether incidents involving problematic Internet and cell phone experiences of students were examples of cyberbullying. They also…

Given the importance of online instructional procedures that engage students in rich online discussions and enhance the quantity and the quality of the discussions, the purpose of this study was to investigate how a particular online instructor engaged graduate students in rich asynchronous online discussions, what roles the instructor played to…

This qualitative teacher research study employed narrative inquiry in order to gain greater understanding of how secondary teachers and students made connections using digital online media. Interviews, focus groups, internet artifacts, and other demographic data were used in this interpretivist study. The teacher and student participants utilized…

One-to-one computing programs and laptop programs have been a popular approach to education reform in developing countries over the last decade. A motivation behind so many one-to-one laptop programs is the desire to overcome with one powerful resource the historical lack of educational tools and resources available in developing countries.…

In addition to growing epidemics of HIV transgenders in Thailand, a low awareness of how to access justice increases their vulnerability to HIV infection. This paper presents a unique case study of how one community-based and led organisations used social networking and instant messaging to address this problem among transgender community in…

Learners and teachers of a foreign language in online and blended learning environments are being offered more opportunities for speaking practice from technological developments. However, in order to maximise these learning opportunities, appropriate task-based materials are required which promote and direct student to student interaction in…

As a part of language learning at schools and universities, students write a variety of texts, such as essays, short compositions and reports, which are then read by teachers who typically comment on the content and grammar of these texts to help the students improve their skills as writers. Although teachers can simply use pen and paper, or a…

The amount of time that people, especially young people, spend on communicative activities in social media is rapidly increasing. We are facing new arenas with great potential for learning in general and for language learning in particular, but their impact on learning is not yet acknowledged as such in educational practice (e.g., Conole, 2010;…

Environmental education (EE) is now clearly specified in educational standards in many parts of the world, and at the same time the view of language learning is moving towards a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) strategy, to make English lessons more relevant and attractive for students (Eurydice, 2006). In this respect,…

This paper updates earlier work in which we defined three generations of distance education pedagogy. We then describe emerging technologies that are most conducive to instructional designs that evolve with each generation. Finally we discuss matching the pedagogies with learning outcomes. (Contains 3 figures.)

In this study, we have investigated developmental patterns of virtual groups in the e-learning environment. Our findings suggest that for virtual groups formed for the purpose of e-learning, dependency and inclusion characterize the initial stage of group development, as such characteristics reinforce cooperative relationships and help to build a…