Although applied to numerous communication contexts, affordance approaches have yet to receive sustained attention in the instructional literature. The ongoing migration to online pedagogy suggests a need to examine the impact of technological affordances and communication in Learning Management Systems. To that end, an experimental study…

Shared meaning-making across differences in today's polarized society requires a socio-political perspective toward conceptualizing and operationalizing collaborative competence. Thus, there is a pressing need for socio-political pedagogies and designs in CSCL to empower students as cultural-historical agents who can communicate and work…

This qualitative study investigates how academic librarians perceive the professional conversation about information literacy assessment, focusing on their characterization of the discourse and the benefits of and barriers to their participation. Findings from phenomenological interviews indicate that librarians view the conversation as valuable…

Rebecca Van Tassell struggled during her first years as a science teacher. She knew her colleagues had good ideas to share, but she never got to see them in action, so she started a walk-through club in which she and a few colleagues visited one another's classrooms and discussed what they saw. The group met every two weeks, after having…

Dean of Math, Science, and Health at Washtenaw Community College, Kristin Brandemuehl describes what it was like taking her first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). As a teacher, Brandemuehl was intrigued with what a MOOC was and what quality of an educational modality it might be. She also figured that participating in this MOOC would not only…

In addition to being a remarkable theologian, there can be no doubt that Paul was a skilled teacher. In this article we highlight connections between Paul's pedagogy and educational principles that are currently propounded. Religious educators today can follow Paul's pedagogy as they teach by example, know their audiences, redirect…

Many science education researchers have argued that learners' commitment to a substance (matter-based) ontology impedes the learning of scientific concepts that scientists typically conceptualize as processes or interactions, such as force, electric current, and heat. By this account, students' tendency to classify these entities as…

Discussion forums are a primary tool for interactions in the online classroom. Discussions are a critical part of the learning process for students, and instructor facilitation should reflect this importance. Effective instructor discussion facilitation encourages students, provides evidence and analysis and links the discussion to subsequent…

This study investigated argumentation patterns resulting in teacher-guided and peer-guided group discussions on four socioscientific-issues (SSI). Two groups, each including five students from grade 7, studied on a different SSI during four weeks. Discussions within both groups were observed, videotaped, and analyzed qualitatively. After four…

This paper describes a student-centered approach to a power engineering technology course using the flipped or inverted classroom as well as active learning in the form of group discussions and team problem solving. The study compares student performance and perceptions of a traditional, teaching-centered classroom to two different flipped…

The authors discuss the relationship between information seeking and epistemic beliefs--beliefs about the source, structure, complexity and stability of knowledge--in the context of collaborative information-seeking discourses. They further suggest that both information seeking, and epistemic cognition research agendas, have suffered from a lack…

While research has increasingly been focused on second language reading, it has primarily been centered on how the learner interacts and decodes printed text. However, there has been minimal research conducted on how the English language learner processes web text, navigates the Internet, or evaluates and comprehends what he/she is reading through…

In this qualitative case study, we examine the texture of talk in the booktalks of a fifth-grade classroom where authentic classroom discussions were common. The discourse analysis of classroom transcripts yielded 13 overlapping move categories describing the talk of the teacher, and nine the talk of the students. A comparison between authentic…

Employability skills among engineering graduates have been a concern due to their inability to perform on a professional platform to the employer's expected level. As they are higher cognitive skills, they are to be nurtured during the graduation period. Keeping this in view, group discussions are identified as one of the methods to elicit…

Twenty-one fourth graders are actively listening and constructively critiquing mathematical statements. Each student is eagerly participating in mathematical discussions that involve multiple strategies to discover solutions. What a dramatic change since the first months of school when the same students sat as quiet as stone statues, hoping their…