Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research project, inspired by the nationwide crisis following Hurricane Katrina, identifies mega-collaboration as an emergent social phenomenon enabled by the Internet. The substantial, original contribution of this research is a mega-collaboration tool (MCT) to enable grassroots individuals and organizations to rapidly form teams, negotiate problem definitions, allocate resources, organize interventions, and mediate their efforts with those of official response organizations. The project demonstrated that a tool that facilitates the exploration of a team’s problem space can support online collaboration. It also determined the basic building blocks required to construct a mega-collaboration tool. In addition, the project demonstrated that it is possible to dynamically build the team data structure through use of the proposed interface, a finding that validates the database design at the core of the MCT. This project has made a unique contribution by proposing a new operational vision of how disaster response, and potentially many other problems, should be managed in the future.

This study examines the relationship between online self-disclosure, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, Facebook use and frequency of status updates in existing self-report measures among 381 college students. Positive correlations were found between: vulnerable narcissism and Facebook status updates, and Facebook use and online self-disclosure. Following the equalization of the two different narcissism scales, college students scored higher on grandiose narcissism as opposed to vulnerable narcissism, the opposite to what was hypothesized. No correlations were found between: grandiose narcissism and Facebook status updates; grandiose narcissism and self-disclosure; and vulnerable narcissism and self-disclosure. Additionally, college women did not score higher in self-disclosure than men on Facebook. Through additional testing a correlation between vulnerable narcissism and Facebook use was also found. Results were negatively affected by the established grandiose narcissism scale failing reliability testing, thus, in the future, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) should be used. High religiosity is also known to positively correlate to positive mental health, therefore, in the future using less religiously orientated college students might yield different narcissism level results.

The purpose of this research synthesis is to investigate how using blogs and Facebookin foreign language teaching can improve pupils´ writing skills in the target language.According to the theoretic framework around which the results of this researchsynthesis are organized, linguistic, pragmatic, intercultural and strategic competence arepart of writing skills. The results show that out of the 8 studies included in the researchsynthesis five showed an improvement in linguistic competence, three out of those fiveshowed an improvement in pragmatic competence as well, and another three studiesalso showed an improvement in pragmatic competence. None of the studies showed animprovement in intercultural or strategic competence.

This research explores the affective responses of five upper-secondary English ESL/EFL students using computer-mediated peer feedback (CMPF), in a writing assignment. The pragmatic approach to the research makes use of a thematic analysis using, motivation, anxiety, attitude, and self-confidence. These themes were extrapolated from Krashen’s Affective filter theory because they are hypothesized to affect second language acquisition. Additionally, the four themes offer a pragmatic framework for exploring student’s affective experiences. The primary data was collected through a series of semi-structured interviews. The interviews were recorded and transcribed to create the primary data. The participants reveal that their learning environment was characterized by distinctly, positive affective responses, low affective filters and favorable conditions for second language acquisition. It is noteworthy that the lack of real time communication alleviated communication apprehension, but also contributed to test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. The minor negative affective responses documented in the study were offset by consistent and constant use of both the computer mediated learning platform, and peer feedback. The results of this study are worth consideration for academics and professionals who are interested in how affective responses impact second language acquisition.

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