We have developed a set of tools for improving online collaborative learning including an automated expert that monitors and moderates discussions, and additional tools to evaluate contributions, semantically search all posted comments, access a library of hundreds of digital books and provide reports to instructors. The technology behind these…

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…

Asynchronous text based discussion boards are included in many online courses, however strategies to compare their use within and between courses, from a disciplinary standpoint, have not been well documented in the literature. The goal of this project was to develop a multi-factor metric which could be used to characterize discussion board use in…

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of an online educational experience through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Transcript analysis of online discussion postings and the Community of Inquiry survey were applied to understand the progression and integration of each of the Community of Inquiry presences. The results…