The present study investigated the effects of group set-up in a semester-long telecollaborative discussion forum project in second-semester German. In order to explore whether group set-up affects learning in discussion forums, small groups of non-native speakers (NNS) of German were partnered either with native speakers (NS), other NNS with the…

Recent research on practice-based doctorates in Australia has revealed an institutional preference for "theorised" research approaches aimed at situating studies of practice within established academic paradigms. In this article we examine how the aim of communicating with artistic peers steers the research design and the production of…

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,…

In this article Raymond Benton, Jr. describes how he implemented a variation on Eliot Aronson's (Aronson et al. 1978) "jigsaw classroom" activity. While there are similarities between Aronson's jigsaw classroom and what is described here, there are differences as well. In Aronson's system, the classroom was divided into subgroups. Each…

For over 3 years, 6 faculty members and 1 graduate student have gathered as a working group applying an interdisciplinary focus to public engagement projects involving immigrant families in the rural Midwest. One dimension of the group's effort has been to involve faculty, staff, and students from many disciplines in its examination of pertinent…

In the current research-focused climate, academics are facing increasing pressure to produce research outputs. This pressure can prove particularly daunting for early career (EC) academics, who are simultaneously attempting to master new teaching and administrative demands while establishing their own independent research trajectories. Previous…

Creativity makes life more enjoyable and successful, both for students and people generally. The complex elements of society require that people be creative in order to guide humanity forward. Thus, educators often strive to promote creativity among their students and themselves. The present paper offers a broad definition of creativity and then…

One pressing issue in resource constrained schools is the lack of access to computer facilities for learning. A single display groupware (SDG) is explored in this paper to provide an alternative solution for this limitation where it allows multiple users to work concurrently on a single computer display. This study aims to investigate the…

Researchers and teachers often invoke context to explain their particular research/teaching issues. However, definitions of context vary widely and the direct impact of the context is often unexplained. Based on research showing contextual differences in second language (L2) learner beliefs and interactional behaviors, the current project compared…

As higher education institutions in United States offer online courses to growing audiences, there is increasing desire to understand how best to engage students with both course content and their peers. This case study examines the effects of assigning chat roles and facilitating self- and group reflection on student--content and student--student…

This exploratory study focuses on the design and evaluation of teaching analytics that relate social learning structure with performance measures in a massive open online course (MOOC) prototype environment. Using reflexive analysis of online learning trace data and qualitative performance measures we present an exploratory empirical study that:…

In this forum piece, we respond to Karin Due's study of social dynamics in groups of students in physics class and gender issues that play out in this context. We discuss two threads that appear in Due's paper: one pertains to patterns of talk within groups and how these patterns open up possibilities for learning, the other pertains to…

It is commonly observed that during classroom or group discussions some students have greater influence than may be justified by the normative quality of those students' contributions. We propose a 5-component theoretical framework in order to explain how undue influence unfolds. We build on literatures on persuasion, argumentation, discourse, and…

Business educators are concerned with integrating diversity-related topics and seek methods by which to teach them. This paper suggests that as classes become more heterogeneous, the opportunity to examine diverse perspectives and experiences naturally arises in the course of class assignments and activities. The differential experiences of…

The focus of this article is on digital literacy and students' use of digital sources. We are examining how students choose digital video sources when doing group work with tablets in a social studies project. The analysis centers on how students collaboratively negotiate and reason around their choice of video sources during an assignment about…