This paper reports the use of Google Docs in a master's degree program as an online tool for collaborative co-construction of knowledge and self-assessment. Participants included eighty graduate teachers in a master's degree. The study employed a mixed method approach. Among the tools applied were a questionnaire, focus group discussions,…

The study of interactions regarding on-line environments for education is an area of research that has being developing during the last years in order to know the type of interactions that take place in discussion forums. Interactions analysis is important in order to know and to understand knowledge construction process in a virtual space.…

Leading a classroom discussion involves multiple components, including establishing norms for participation, assisting students in engaging in careful readings of text ahead of time, and modeling features of academic discourse. In other work, Grossman and her colleagues refer to this as the "decomposition" of practice--breaking down complex…

This study investigates mathematics teacher learning in a video-based professional development environment called "video clubs." In particular, the authors explore whether teachers develop professional vision, the ability to notice and interpret significant features of classroom interactions, as they participate in a video club. Analysis for the…

National efforts have been made to encourage technology integration in teacher preparation with expectations for frequent and successful applications with K-12 learners. While online learning has become pervasive in many fields in education, it has been somewhat slow to catch on in K-12 settings. The "Handbook of Research on Emerging…

A recent phenomenon in the MOOC space has been the development of courses tailored to educators serving in K-12 settings. MOOCs, particularly as a form of educator professional development, face a number of challenges. Academics, as well as pundits from traditional and new media, have raised a number of concerns about MOOCs, including the lack of…

An online learning community enables learners to access up-to-date information via the Internet anytime--anywhere because of the ubiquity of the World Wide Web (WWW). Students can also interact with one another during the learning process. Hence, researchers want to determine whether such interaction produces learning synergy in an online learning…

The present study attempted to investigate whether young learners who were new to knowledge building approaches could work towards advancing both individual and collective knowledge, and whether knowledge building could be beneficial to both high-achieving and low-achieving students. Findings reported in this paper are from one and a half-year…

With rapid emergence to the birth of the knowledge era, an active and interactive learning environment is fundamental to any teaching and learning process. Over time, negative implications of traditional learning environment are mounting, and measures must be taken to challenge it. With extensive research on available learning tools, it has become…

This study investigated the application of an online videocase discussion community into fostering preservice and inservice EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers' professional development in Taiwan. This investigation further revealed the nature and development of discussion discourse and the participating teachers' perceptions of this…

As course management systems (CMS) gain popularity in facilitating teaching. A forum is a key component to facilitate the interactions among students and teachers. Content analysis is the most popular way to study a discussion forum. But content analysis is a human labor intensity process; for example, the coding process relies heavily on manual…

Recent research indicated that students' ability to construct evidence-based explanations in classrooms through scientific inquiry is critical to successful science education. Structured argumentation support environments have been built and used in scientific discourse in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, no research work in the…

When asked what they would find most helpful to enable them to use technologies more in their teaching, most teachers say "give me examples, in my subject area" and "point me to relevant people I can discuss these issues with". Web 2.0 technologies--with their emphasis on sharing, networking and user production--seem to offer a…

Teachers are searching for new venues through which they may meet stringent professional development requirements. Under competitive funding from NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Office of Education and the NASA Explorer Schools Project, U.S. Satellite Laboratory, Inc. created a series of live, online, interactive…

With the resources provided by communication technologies, E-learning has been employed in multiple universities, as well as in wide range of training centers and schools. This book presents a structured collection of chapters, dealing with the subject and stressing the importance of E-learning. It shows the evolution of E-learning, with…