The perception and acceptance of the Internet as a personal communication channel, and the functional characteristics of the Internet, provide a new means for geographically separated friends and family members to communicate with one another. This paper presents a theoretical framework for the study of family communication and electronic mail. A…

Because telecomputing can be such a powerful tool for stimulating communications among students, it is important for teachers to learn how to apply this technology in their classrooms. Free Educational Mail (FrEdMail) is an electronic network through which K-12 students, teachers, and administrators in the United States and other countries can use…

On July 1, 1991, the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Research Committee launched a pilot project to mentor academic librarians in their conduct of research. Since the mentors and protegees were potentially from all over the United States, the decision was made to mentor using the electronic conferencing capability of BITNET…

While electronic mail (e-mail) has accomplished an "instructional objective" of the fastest growing method of communication, the backlash can be harmful with respect to workforce productivity. The capabilities of online communications have broadened methods in which instructors and students can interact, business operate, and people…

This study compared electronic mail, traditional, and combination approaches for teaching graduate introductory statistics classes. The electronic course that was the focus of this study was offered in fall terms of 1995 through 1999. There were 23 participants in the electronic only classes, 69 in the traditional only classes, and 27 in the…

Previous research and policy in online education has underestimated the amount of effort and commitment required by those asked to develop and deliver courses online. Although implementation of e-learning technologies is on the rise, the faculty adoption rate is slow. Prior studies attribute the lack of adoption to faculty resistance to online…

This study examines the results of a three year video mentoring program, the NASA Virtual Science Mentor (VSM) program, which paired 56 NASA mentor engineers and scientists with 56 middle school science teachers in seven Southwest Florida counties. The study sought to determine the impact on students, mentors, and teachers participating in the…

The purpose of the present study is to describe the use of a learning conversation approach integrating E-mail and to analyze the evolution of the learning conversation among students. This pedagogical strategy was aimed at supporting college students who attended regular lectures (n=57). Results show that it is possible to incite metacognitive…

This paper investigates a number of questions concerning the relative advantages of the U.S. Mail versus electronic mail. Specifically, the paper asks: (1) what is the impact that E-mail has on the ways in which people communicate interpersonally in a visual presentation; (2) will E-mail replace such traditional forms of communication as greeting…

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…

How educators, especially those in the field of literacy, view and make use of email and its text-based features has been the subject of research. Journal articles addressing what educators and researchers know about email and how they work with email communication were reviewed. Email has moved from a limited group of users to the masses.…

This document describes a pilot study to provide an opportunity for preservice teachers enrolled in elementary language arts methods courses at Indiana University South Bend (IUSB) and Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) to communicate with one another over time and distance through electronic mail (e-mail). Students at both IUSB and SEMO…

This document contains ideas and information regarding using the Internet in the professional development of vocational education teachers. Presented first is basic information about what the Internet is and its value as a tool for professional development (including its role as a vehicle for accessing the ERIC database, taking online classes, and…

To look at the issue of institutional constraints that could be affecting the implementation of portfolios in teacher education courses, a 10-item survey was distributed over e-mail to subscribers of four listservs. In addition, several surveys were sent to colleagues of the author who were using portfolios but who were not subscribers to…

A study invoked the uses and gratifications framework to look at a computerized bulletin board used largely by Indian students. Computer printouts of the first 15 messages entered into the bulletin board for each of 7 consecutive days (for a total of 105 messages) were classified by a human coder into categories of surveillance, diversionary,…