A year-long collaborative action research project used networked technologies to connect researchers at a university-based online professional development program and a group of practitioner researchers based in a range of schools and educational agencies in several countries. They studied the process and effects of online professional development…

The authors studied a course in which an instructor allowed individuals at a distance to participate. Although these students were not formally enrolled in the university where the class took place, the instructor gave them full access to all course materials and encouraged them to complete course assignments. The authors examined the time and…

Writing on contemporary culture and social life, sociologists and cultural theorists have been describing new or changing forms of movement, variously described as cultural "flows," "liquid life," or a "networked society." The change in such movements or mobilities of people, media, material goods, and other social phenomena, including the reach…

This study involved fourteen semistructured interviews with teaching staff at a Brazilian university. These interviews were aimed at unveiling possible transformations caused by distance education in classroom teaching and in medical assistance practices. The discourses collected were analyzed using qualitative methods and divided into groups with…

Noting that corporations and academic institutions are struggling with issues of balance between system security and freedom of speech, this paper reviews current literature concerning privacy in computer-mediated communication (CMC) from the perspectives of both the individual user and the system administration. Focusing on the communicative…

The effectiveness of an evaluation model for interactive television courses was studied. Inquiry was conducted with distance education graduate students using a structured, open-ended questioning format to obtain their authentic voices about a traditional model: Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID), a facilitator-based model how to open the…

Satisfaction is a construct that is important to the development of intrinsic motivation and the continuing effort to learn. Research that helps to identify those factors that contribute to satisfaction is useful in the design of electronic support systems for individuals and groups. This paper investigates the impact of "need for…

As more and more universities and composition classrooms add computer capabilities, the Internet is becoming an increasingly valuable part of the freshman composition course. The Internet can help students do research, learn and understand different perspectives on a given topic, and open their eyes to the potential of the technology. The most…

Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), are text-based virtual reality environments in which participants separated by great physical distances can communicate and collaborate in programming. Most MUDs started out as adventure games but are quickly being adapted for more "serious" endeavors. This paper presents a case study of the experiences of a…

The nature of the multiuser object oriented (MOO) environment lends itself to flexible and rich interactive collaboration space providing interactive discussion, mail, mailing list, and news features to its virtual denizens. EdMOO (HREF1) was created in mid-1995 as an environment for teachers to experience the text based virtual reality…

One of a series of educational packages designed for implementation either in a workshop atmosphere or through individual study, this Hot Topic guide presents a variety of materials to assist educators in designing and implementing classroom projects and activities centering on the topic of the Internet and the K-12 classroom. The Hot Topic guide…

This research paper describes how E-Mail and Vax Notes were used in the Spring 1994 political science classes, "Contemporary Global Issues" and "Women and Politics," involving 80 students at the University of Wisconsin--La Crosse. By modeling and hands-on practice, students were introduced to the electronic mail and then given three major projects…

This study examined the relationship between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and school culture, in order to provide a better understanding of what will be needed if the promise of technology in educational reform is to be realized. Online interviews conducted as a series of electronic mail exchanges were the primary means of investigation.…

Ideally, learning resources should be built over a shared pool of fine reusable granular learning objects. However, in order to avoid contextual lacks, dynamic creation of such resources would mostly rely on the conceptual relationships among learning objects inside a repository. These conceptual relationships, as well as the learning objects…

Despite the strong interests among practitioners, there is a knowledge gap with regard to online communities of practice. This study examines knowledge sharing among critical-care and advanced-practice nurses, who are engaged in a longstanding online community of practice. Data were collected about members' online knowledge contribution as well as…