Comparing Weblogs to Threaded Discussion Tools in Online Educational Contexts.

Weblogs or blogs are being heralded as the “next big thing” in education. In this article we examine the advantages and disadvantages of this form of Internet-based interaction using the Community of Inquiry model with its focus on social, cognitive and teaching presences. We conclude that blogging has distinct advantages over more common threaded discussion in its support of style, ownership and identity, and its public nature may enhance resolution phases of cognitive presence. However, its lack of safety and the current inefficiencies of linking and threading messages present greater challenges than the more familiar threaded discussion or email list. Perhaps the blog’s greatest relative advantage is for non formal and open education that takes learning beyond the traditional course

Using Podcasts to support Communication Skills Development: A Case Study for Content Preferences among Postgraduate Research Students

The need for the integration of generic skills training into structured PhD programmes is widely accepted. However, effective integration of such training requires flexible delivery mechanisms which facilitate self-paced and independent learning. A video recording was made of an eminent speaker delivering a 1-h live presentation to a group of 15 first-year science and engineering PhD research students. The topic of the presentation was inter-disciplinary professional communication skills. Following the presentation, the video recording was post-processed into seven alternative podcast formats. These podcast formats included a typed transcription, a full audio recording, a full video recording, presentation slides with embedded speech etc. The choice of podcast formats was based on ease-of-production by a typical computer-literate academic and ease-of-use by a typical computer-literate student. At a subsequent session, the seven podcast formats were shown to the 15 students and a survey to assess their reactions to the various formats was carried out. The survey results (quantitative and qualitative) were analysed to provide useful insight into the student preferences in relation to podcast formats. The students expressed a clear preference for summary key-point slides with explanatory voice-over by the original speaker

“How are you getting on?”

This research evaluates the use of asynchronous online discussion boards in assessment of work-based placement in a social care degree programme. Owing to a scarcity of educational technologies in the programme at the time (pre-COVID), discussion boards were introduced in a pilot endeavour to assess students' reflections on placement experiences. Individualised feedback was pledged from the programme instructors with a view to enhancing their reflective skills and their engagement with their work placement. Staff and learners’ attitudes and experiences were investigated to identify the effectiveness of using discussion boards for work-based placement. The components of discussion boards for this purpose are identified, and the considerations to be made when implementing discussion boards to support the development of reflection skills are presented. Using a mixed methods sequential complementarity research design, two student focus groups were held following the distribution of an online survey. Four staff instructors were interviewed about their experiences of and attitudes towards the experience. Finally, a hybrid code adapted from Henri’s (1992) computer mediated conferencing framework and Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle was created to analyse the reflectivity and interactivity in the group discussions. Whilst discussion boards are useful as a digital platform to foster collaboration and discursive activities, in practice this assessment as delivered fell short of maximising their efficacy. Despite this, four components of discussion boards were identified and key considerations when using discussion boards to encourage reflective activity in social care work-based placement are proposed and discussed

Do You See What I Mean? Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis.

This chapter explores a sociolinguistic approach to computer-mediated communication (CMC), by examining how higher education teachers use digital media to manage interpersonal interaction in their online courses, form impressions, shape and maintain relationships with their students. Previous studies have often focused on the differences between online and offline interactions, though contemporary research is moving towards the view that CMC should be studied as an embedded linguistic form in everyday life. The study of language in these contexts is typically based on text-based forms of CMC, (often referred to as computer-mediated discourse analysis). Within this, focus in the chapter is on the devising and implementation of pragmatic linguistics of online interactions; at a high level this refers to meaning-making, shared belief systems and intercultural differences; at a specific level this includes issues such as turn-taking and the sequential analysis and organisation of virtual ‘interlocution’

“How are you getting on?”

This research evaluates the use of asynchronous online discussion boards in assessment of work-based placement in a social care degree programme. Owing to a scarcity of educational technologies in the programme at the time (pre-COVID), discussion boards were introduced in a pilot endeavour to assess students' reflections on placement experiences. Individualised feedback was pledged from the programme instructors with a view to enhancing their reflective skills and their engagement with their work placement. Staff and learners’ attitudes and experiences were investigated to identify the effectiveness of using discussion boards for work-based placement. The components of discussion boards for this purpose are identified, and the considerations to be made when implementing discussion boards to support the development of reflection skills are presented. Using a mixed methods sequential complementarity research design, two student focus groups were held following the distribution of an online survey. Four staff instructors were interviewed about their experiences of and attitudes towards the experience. Finally, a hybrid code adapted from Henri’s (1992) computer mediated conferencing framework and Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle was created to analyse the reflectivity and interactivity in the group discussions. Whilst discussion boards are useful as a digital platform to foster collaboration and discursive activities, in practice this assessment as delivered fell short of maximising their efficacy. Despite this, four components of discussion boards were identified and key considerations when using discussion boards to encourage reflective activity in social care work-based placement are proposed and discussed

Wat wordt er nu eigenlijk gezegd? Een verkennend onderzoek naar communicatiepatronen op het Darkweb

Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, accountability, and effectivit

Wat wordt er nu eigenlijk gezegd? Een verkennend onderzoek naar communicatiepatronen op het Darkweb

Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, accountability, and effectivit

Collaborative mind mapping to support online discussion in teacher education

Mind maps that combine text, images, colour and layout elements, have been widely used in classroom teaching to improve retention, knowledge organization and conceptual understanding. Furthermore, studies have shown the advantages of using mind-maps to facilitate collaborative learning. However, there are gaps in the literature regarding the use and study of collaborative mind-mapping in online learning settings. This integrated-article dissertation explores the implementation of online collaborative mind mapping activities in a mathematics teacher education program at a Canadian university. The studies were developed with participants enrolled in three different courses where at least two of the online activities used collaborative mind mapping for knowledge construction. Rather than prove the efficacy of a visual tool, as other studies have, this research provides an understanding of how the learning and knowledge construction process occurs when student interact with one another using a mind mapping tool. The set of articles contained in this dissertation answers to the questions: (1) What are the roles that collaborative mind mapping plays in the participants’ education as mathematics teachers? (2) What are the differences between student interaction in threaded forums and mind-maps? (3) How does online collaborative mind mapping enhance the aspects of engagement, representation, and expression in teacher education? (4) How can grounded theory methods be developed with sources of online multimodal data such as online mind mapping? (5) How do students interact and construct knowledge when they engage in online collaborative mind mapping? The research view is qualitative and uses a variety of descriptive case study, content analysis, and constructivist grounded theory methods. This dissertation provides insights into online collaborative knowledge construction when using collaborative mind-mapping and adds to the existing literature on online learning, especially concerning the use of visual, collaborative tools. It contains guidelines and suggestions to implement this type of learning experiences in other courses and/or other education levels

Immersive justice : the impact of face to face communication and video mediated communication in the quality of discussion and deliberation in the justice process

In an increasingly digital world, video-mediated communication is becoming more prominent. Video technology is already being used in courtrooms, with a potential future for a distributed and remote courtroom. This thesis investigates how the quality of discussion is impacted across a video-conferencing system and face-to-face communication, with the aim of comparing the participant perspective with observations to create a well-rounded understanding of group dynamics. Participants watched a mock trial before deliberating the problem via both video-mediated and face-to-face communication in groups of three, with sessions recorded and transcribed for data analysis. The data was analysed from three different angles: Interaction Process Analysis, Interruption Occurrences and Observation; and was supplemented with participant surveys. The results showed that video-mediated communication had a higher occurrence of interruptions and lower levels of eye contact, while face-to-face communication had higher occurrences of back channel utterances to show active listening. Future research should look into using a more sophisticated video-conferencing system to combat the eye contact issue, but other than that the quality of discussion was not impacted by the medium of communication