Effective communication is central in the completion of most endeavors; however, a failure to communicate clearly or effectively can be commonplace and difficult to resolve. Communication within the online classroom is fraught with misinterpretations as there is a lack of real-time communication between instructors and students. Gaining a better…

Recent advances in computational linguistics and the social sciences have created new opportunities for the education research community to analyze relevant large-scale text data. However, the take-up of these advances in education research is still nascent. In this paper, we review the recent automated text methods relevant to educational…

Discussion forums are often touted as maximising student participation and learning but concerns around engagement counter any perceived benefits. Often participation is the measure of engagement, and students who do not post are deemed unengaged. To further examine engagement and forums as learning communities, we used analytic data from 270…

This paper reports the findings of a one-year research project focused on a series of structured interventions aimed at enhancing task instruction to develop students' understanding of higher assessment practices, and encouraging higher order learning. It describes the nature and iterations of the interventions, made into a large-enrolment online…

Asynchronous online discussion forums are common in blended learning models and are popular with students. A previous report has suggested that participation in these forums may assist student learning in a gross anatomy subject but it was unclear as to whether more academically able students post more often or whether participation led to…

With the steady development of online education and online learning environments, possibilities to support social interactions between students have advanced significantly. This study examined the relationship between indicators of social presence and academic performance. Social presence is defined as students' ability to engage socially with an…

The researcher surveyed 126 members of the Nutrition and Dietetic Educators and Preceptors (NDEP) group from all six NDEP regions across the country to examine the relationship between their ideologies, commonly utilized pedagogical techniques, and collaborative experiences with colleagues from different professions. The study also examined the…

This article investigates the communicative styles of three different peer mentors in the context of online language learning, and considers their effect on student engagement. A key objective is to show how an innovative corpus-based technique, keyword analysis, can be used as a first step towards identifying communicative styles. We view…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using e-mails to motivate and retain online learners. The study used a single case study design to quantify the number of discussion posts the students selected for the study made. Using ABA design, the researcher observed four students who did not make the discussion posts needed for…

Although lots of studies have investigated collaborative knowledge construction in online courses, the factors influencing this process are yet to be fully determined. This study provides quantitative and qualitative types of evidence on how (naturally emerged) student facilitation and quality of initial postings influence collaborative knowledge…

This article offers a vision for technology supported collaborative and discussion-based learning at scale. It begins with historical work in the area of tutorial dialogue systems. It traces the history of that area of the field of Artificial Intelligence in Education as it has made an impact on the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative…

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that might impact student knowledge sharing within virtual teams through online discussion boards. These factors include: trust, mutual influence, conflict, leadership, and cohesion. A path model was developed to determine whether relationships exist among knowledge sharing from asynchronous group…

This study used a quasi-experimental design to examine whether exposure to moral development theory and dilemma discussion in the asynchronous online learning environment resulted in significant gains in principled moral reasoning (DIT N2-scores) of undergraduate elementary and secondary education students. Participants were undergraduate students…

Due to growing student demand for flexibility concerning time and space, blended instruction continues to expand in colleges and universities (Garrison & Kanuka 2004). In order for institutions to reach higher levels of effectiveness in blended learning, pedagogical approaches that impact the way higher education faculty design and deliver…

Online education has become a prevalent means of program and course delivery, especially within teacher education programs. However, the lack of preparation in online design is concerning, especially in the field of teacher education where the focus is preparing preservice and practicing teachers to implement effective, evidence-based…