This webtext describes a pilot course that united four first-year composition courses around shared readings and online discussion addressing the physical and virtual university. The goal of the pilot was to foster previously impossible student interactions by exploring how discrete discussion roles shaped interaction and reputations among…

A growing number of adult learners invest time, energy, and financial resources in completing online doctoral degrees. Several factors, other than the program itself, influence a person's decision to pursue a degree online. Many choose online learning because they are faced with challenges often typical for adult learners that prohibit them from…

Founded in 1988, Writers in Electronic Residence (WiER) is an educational and arts initiative that uses technology to connect students, teachers and Canadian authors as members of a creative writing community. Through on-line discussions that allow for a lively multi-party or many-to-many exchange, students and teachers in the classroom work with…

In the past, librarians relied solely on accredited children's awards, professional reviews from reputable journals and newspapers, and word of mouth from trusted sources to purchase materials. That "word of mouth" hasn't gone away. It has merely transformed itself into an electronic state. Blogs replace nothing and will never replace professional…

The Internet is increasingly being used as a tool for communicating and learning in primary schools across many developed and developing countries. The place of social chat as part of online interactions has as yet not been fully recognised as an important component of learning. In this paper, the interactions of students in a Sydney primary…

Today's new media tools are incredibly powerful communication vehicles that allow organizations to connect and engage with many different audiences. With more than seven million users, Twitter is growing at an annual rate of 1,382 percent, Facebook boasts over 250 million active members, and aspiring writers have started more than 133 million…

Much has been written about the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in distance learning environments. A quick Google search turns up as many as 178,000 links to the term. ICT has been less used and discussed as a means of communication between research student and supervisor--particularly where this is the major means of student…

Generating excitement about poetry is often a challenge with high school patrons. While some teens have discovered the cathartic and aesthetic qualities of poetry, many have never experienced the joy of poetry. A course the author took in 2003 at The University of Georgia with Dr. JoBeth Allen, "Poetry in the Classroom," ignited a…

Electronic communication is characteristically concerned with "the message" (eM), those who send them (S), and those who receive and read them (R). This relationship could be simplified into the equation eM = S + R. When this simple equation is applied to electronic communication, several elements are added that make this straightforward act of…

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters--modern perversions of "ars dictaminis" (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the…

This paper reports on a failed experiment to use Wiki technology to support student engagement with the subject matter of a third year undergraduate module. Using qualitative data, the findings reveal that in an educational context, social technologies such as Wiki's, are perceived differently compared with ordinary personal use and this…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine e-mentoring as a way to sustain distance training and education. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes a framework for sustaining distance training and education by adding e-mentoring (mentoring over the internet). It also explores the role of mentors, the benefits of the programs to…

The correlation between three conceptions of social presence (seen as 1. a subjective quality of a medium that determines the quality of the communication and perception of others, 2. self-projection onto the group, and 3. identification with the group) and different aspects of perceived learning in online discussion groups were tested. Six…

People may exhibit two kinds of modifications when demonstrating action for others: modifications to facilitate bottom-up, or sensory-based processing; and modifications to facilitate top-down, or knowledge-based processing. The current study examined actors' production of such modifications in action demonstrations for audiences that differed in…

Surprisingly, many tools exist on the web that can help sites become more inviting and easier to use. By now, many are probably familiar with the free tools offered by Flickr, del.icio.us, or YouTube for embedding images, tags, and videos on webpages. This article presents a comprehensive list of some perhaps lesser-known but equally useful tools…