Drawing from a five-site multicase study, this paper examines three middle school students' perspectives on weekly classroom discussions that took place over a 6-month period in order to analyze the dynamics of classroom talk and how discussions can be affected by the teacher's interaction with the students. The three students were members of an…

This study examined how message-response exchanges produced in the interactions between active learners only, reflective learners only, active-reflective learners and reflective-active learners affected how often active versus reflective learners posted rebuttals to arguments and challenges across four types of exchanges that believed to promote…

Scope and method of study: Using Mary Douglas' (1982) Grid and Group Typology, the purpose of this case study was to explain the distinctive patterns of student engagement, communication and community in the culture of four online courses. The participants were four online instructors and four of their students who completed online courses at…

This study integrated collaborative problem-based learning (collaborative PBL) with blended learning to explore the emerging process and function of online learning communities among preservice teachers. Thirty-two preservice teachers participated in a 16-week instruction program. Analyses of online group discussions and portfolios found that (a)…

This article presents a study carried out in the area of distance learning electronic forums. Based on the relevant bibliographic review, electronic forums are increasingly becoming part of the learning process. The specific study was stimulated by previous works relevant to the modelling of the behaviour of IT students at Hellenic Open University…

Net-based collaborative learning discourses often suffer from deficiencies such as lack of coherence and coordination. It is suggested that the provision of two functionalities, referencing and typing, which learners may optionally use to ground their contributions during a chat-based discourse, can improve collaborative learning. In particular,…

In this article, we describe a project on reasoning about socio-scientific issues (SSIs), involving French and Australian pre-service science teachers engaged in on-line discussion and development of a wiki. In the research, we developed frameworks for looking at the quality of reasoning about "socially acute" sustainability questions.…

To understand the nature of talk in small group writing workshops, including the way talk changes over time and the use students make of such talk, a study analyzed the conversations of 17 inexperienced college writers as they composed and revised self-selected pieces during a one-semester composition course. A student from the course who did not…

The Migrant Educational Technology (MET) program is an after-school program that introduces Latino migrant families in Detroit to basic computing and educational software applications, with the goal of supporting students' schoolwork and improving their academic achievement. The 1998-99 MET program was organized into three phases. In the…

Compares students in two English-as-a-Second-Language writing environments: a networked computer-assisted classroom and a traditional oral classroom. Results indicate that while the writing environment has no effect on attitudes toward writing with computers or writing apprehension, writing quality improves in the computer-assisted classroom and…

Is it feasible to hold concurrent, small-group, peer-managed discussions in large elementary school classes? We sought an initial answer to this question in a fifth-grade class in Hefei, China. The 52 students in the class were divided into seven small groups. The seven groups held four simultaneous discussions without immediate supervision or…

This paper studies the social talk of high school students in online discussion forums. On-task talk has generally been assessed as valuable discussion because it contributes directly to productive learning. Off-task conversation, on the other hand, is often regarded as useless and a waste of time. Should this social talk indeed be regarded as an…

This document reports on a conference focused on speech problems. The main objective of these discussions was to facilitate a deeper understanding of human communication through interaction of conference participants with colleagues in other disciplines. Topics discussed included speech production, feedback, speech perception, and development of…

Analyzes how two groups of eighth graders and their teacher create literary texts during small group discussion, and suggests the importance of talk as a means of constructing meaning. (NKA)

Examines the various frames within which debates, discussions, and dialogs occurred at a major midwestern university, concerning the disbandment of one of its departments. Stresses the importance of building a unified vision in the context of the common good. Contains 34 references. (JDI)