This article advances the consideration of resilience as an important concept in the transitional process of learning to adapt to life with chronic illness, by utilising interactional processes inherent in participatory action research (PAR) that may strengthen a person's capacity to live well with long-term illness. Sharing experiences and…

Newspapers and other media are often used as a source of information on science issues, both by the public and teachers in classrooms. Over six months, we collected discussions of global warming issues from the online forums of a national newspaper. Our analysis of these contributions suggests there is a considerable effort in these forums,…

Cross-age tutors were randomly assigned to one of the three tutor training conditions distinguished for the current study: (1) the labelling experimental condition, characterized by requirements to label their tutor interventions, based on the e-moderating model of Salmon; (2) the non-labelling experimental condition, focusing on tutor's acting…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of virtual community identities among Chinese internet users and their motivation for lurking, posting or flaming. Design/methodology/approach: Taking Qiangguo Luntan as an online study site the authors apply an ethnographic approach for the research, a method that is becoming more…

Argumentative activity has been found beneficial for construction of knowledge and evaluation of information in some conditions. Many theorists in CSCL and some empiricists have suggested that graphical representations may help in this endeavor. In the present study, we examine effects of type of ontology and of synchronicity in students that…

Much has been written about the promise of online learning environments for higher education, and there is a rapidly growing body of research examining the nature of learning and interaction in such courses. This article presents a discourse analysis of an interactive, text-based, online, graduate education course, designed and taught according to…

This article reports a grounded theory study of the moderation of asynchronous online discussions, to explore the processes by which tutors in higher education decide when and how to moderate. It aims to construct a theory of e-moderation based on some key factors which appear to influence e-moderation. It discusses previous research on the…

A study examined the strategic behaviors of email users when they are reading online email messages. Three voluntary subjects (an undergraduate student and 2 graduate students) read a group of 24 email messages collected through a listserv discussion group. The messages were collected over a period of 1 month concentrating on one theme. Subjects…

A two-part effort called "The TACT Mentor Program: A Dual Introduction into College Teaching," designed to assist new faculty in their first year of teaching at Heidelberg College, Ohio, is described and evaluated. The first part of the program, TACT (Teachers and College Teaching) consisted of weekly discussions based on the book…

The isolation common to many veteran teachers begins with the student teaching experience. A model of feedback and interchange is tested which uses small group seminars and observational data in an attempt to initiate reflection in student teachers and to break the cycle of isolation and dependency. (Author/MT)

Examines the hypotheses that students need to improve communication skills and that an innovative pedagogy is more effective than traditional methods for improving communication skills. Describes the teaching pedagogy and its implementation in an introductory sociology course. Results suggest that this pedagogy is more effective than conventional…

Comparison of matriculated freshmen from 1988 and 1989 at the University of Washington found that those students participating in the Freshman Interest Group (200 students from 1988 and 435 students from 1989) were more likely to stay in a competitive course, had higher grade point averages, and were less likely to drop out of college than…

The trend toward increased technology in traditional higher education classrooms has been met with both optimism and criticism. One of the major criticisms of technology in the college classroom is that it does little, if anything, to improve student learning. Taking this view of technology into account, this study examined how the use of…

The coming era of Web 2.0 focuses on users' active online participation and interaction. Among such interactive media, the blog is one representative tool of online knowledge construction. The purpose of this study is to explore the behavioral patterns and the depth of knowledge construction when using blogs for teachers' professional development.…

Recent empirical evidence suggests that the updated DeLone and McLean's information systems (D&M IS) model can identify the determinants of success of online communities in terms of member loyalty (Lin and Lee 2006). This study is similarly concerned with the challenge of identifying the determinants of success of online communities, but it…