This microethnographic study describes what happened when a small group of 12- and 13-year olds were given the opportunity to compose with hypermedia in their language arts class. Drawing from semiotic, sociocultural, constructivist, transactional and holistic theories, the researcher interpreted the meanings the students and their language arts teacher ascribed to the creation of a student-run online magazine. The researcher investigated the kinds of things that the seventh graders in this study value, what the webzine project meant to the student editors, what processes are involved in the creation of a webzine, how hypermedia literacy functions as a language form, how the hypermedia design project impacted the language arts curriculum, and the roles that computers can play in the classroom. Hypermedia is a multi-symbolic semiotic language form that is still in the process of evolving. Hypermedia literacy requires transmediation, among print literacies, oral literacies, visual literacies, computer literacies and hypertext literacies. Becoming fluent in hypermedia involves orchestrating the various elements (cueing systems) of hypermedia and flexibly applying this knowledge within a variety of hypermedia genres. The webzine project was a positive experience for the seventh graders in this study because it met their affective needs to be active, to learn new things, to have new experiences, to feel motivated and interested, to be social, to have freedom, to feel proud and to have a sense of audience. It also stimulated the cognitive processes of generating ideas, collaborating, problem solving, representing concepts and monitoring their own learning. It is suggested that hypermedia design projects cannot be fully integrated into the language arts curriculum unless the district and/or the classroom teacher has made a paradigmatic shift from a transmission model to a constructivist philosophy of education. Successful integration of hypermedia composition in the curriculum is also related to the students' and the teachers' perception of the potential roles of computers. Based on the results of this study and others, the author concludes that junior high language arts students should be given invitations to compose with hypermedia whenever feasible, but that educators should not dismiss the challenges associated with such an undertaking.

In Ideological Intersections: The Cultural Work and Practical Implications of American Literature and Composition Telecourses, I draw on both my own experience developing, producing, and teaching two composition telecourses and an analysis of three nationally-produced and distributed telecourses in order to explain the benefits and disadvantages of using one-way, non-interactive telecourses to teach English studies courses. The Introduction locates the use of educational technologies within the current academic labor crisis in the Humanities. Chapter 1 situates the telecourse within the theoretical and pedagogical issues that confront teachers of writing, Chapter 2 describes in detail the viewing experience and the logistics of three composition telecourses, and Chapter 3 focuses on two of the leading, nationally distributed literature telecourses. The first sections of Chapter 4 demonstrate that telecourses have proved to be an accessible educational opportunity for students who would otherwise not attend school, an opportunity for faculty to gain new skills, and an additional revenue source for institutions. However, there are three primary disadvantages: (1) students have little opportunity for interaction, (2) telecourses have a markedly high drop-out rate; and (3) the course material is markedly conservative. The latter sections of Chapter 4 present technological solutions to the problem of interactivity, with the warning that such computerized teaching methods may function as a repressive surveillance system that inappropriately regulates faculty members and students. Chapter 5 demonstrates that the telecourses function as an ideological apparatus that transmits American culture. As such, the televised material reifies the rhetoric of the American melting pot, perpetuating the myth of standardized Americans who are happily inculcated into the educational and occupational systems of mainstream America, without acknowledging the complications or difficulties faced by such characters in real life. Moreover, the televised material reproduces the rhetoric of American individualism, offering students a false vision of a future of unbound glories in order to train them in occupational and functional literacy at the expense of critical, oppositional thinking. The Epilogue returns to the disturbing implications for academic labor, and argues that classroom teachers may no longer be necessary if institutions can disseminate information with the help of new technologies and simply hire inexpensive teachers to be responsible for logistics and assessment.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of collaborative computer-mediated projects on students' writing performance. The subjects of the study were 20 advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) composition students enrolled in an English 107 course at the University of Arizona in the Spring 1999 semester. The class met twice a week: once in a regular classroom, once in the College of Humanities Collaborative Learning Laboratory (COHlab). The study addressed three main research questions: (1) Does student participation in on-line synchronous discussions vary in different configurations of discussions and for different thinking styles? (2) Does writing performance vary between collaborative and independent tasks? (3) Is there a change in students' attitudes to collaborative assignments and to the use of computers in class from the beginning to the end of the semester? To answer the first question, the researcher analyzed the transcripts of on-line discussions and essays written collaboratively and independently. Discussions were conducted in different configurations (whole class vs. small group and anonymous vs. non-anonymous). To collect discussion data, an archive feature was used that provided complete transcripts of discussions, including students' names (or random numbers in anonymous discussions) and time when each comment was written. Repeated measures MANOVA and qualitative analyses were used to examine the data. The second question, investigating the difference in writing performance between independent and collaborative academic writing tasks, was addressed by (1) examining the results of textual analysis performed by the computer, and (2) examining the results of holistic evaluation conducted by ESL raters. Repeated measures MANOVA was used to analyze the data. To answer the third question, pre-semester and post-semester student surveys were used, as well as course evaluations. The students' thinking styles were measured using Sternberg's Thinking Styles Questionnaire. Qualitative analysis was used to examine the data. The results of the study indicated no difference in the discussion content, amount of communication, or interaction dynamics between the discussions of different configurations, or between the students with internal and external thinking styles. In terms of differences in writing performance between collaborative and independent essays, no difference was found by discrete-point computerized text analysis. However, ESL raters evaluated collaborative essays higher than independent ones. Finally, the results of the analysis of the students' attitudes indicated that, in general, the students' attitudes to the use of computers have improved over the course of the semester. This finding is important, as previous research has shown that positive attitudes lead to increased motivation, and increased motivation, in its turn, leads to more favorable learning outcomes in an L2 classroom.

The use of an Interactive Computer Classroom (ICC) as compared to a traditional lecture format (LEC) for a nursing management course taught during the fall semester 1996 was examined in this study. The ICC was structured around Group Systems Support software, a tool previously used in business settings for group decision-making activities. The outcomes included critical thinking, measured by written responses completed at the end of each class and by scores from the California Critical Thinking Skills Test; academic performance, measured by the management course's midterm grades; and student satisfaction, measured by attendance and course evaluations. To consider generalizability of performance, the midterm examination scores of a concurrent nursing course were also measured. The management course midterm scores of the ICC group were significantly higher than those of the LEC group. The response to the open-ended-questions of the student evaluations indicated strong support of the participation made available by the computer activities but frustration with the computer hardware and software. Further evidence supporting student satisfaction was that six students requested to be transferred to the ICC group when the study was completed at mid-semester, while no students chose to move to the LEC group. There were no significant differences in scores for the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, the midterms grades for a concurrent nursing course, and class attendance.

This dissertation reports on an investigation of task-based, synchronous, computer-mediated communication (CMC) and its relationship to second language lexical acquisition among learners of English. Over the course of one university semester, twenty-four intermediate-low and intermediate level non-native speakers of English from the English Language Center at Michigan State University engaged in multiple communicative tasks in pairs using ChatNet, a browser-based chat program. One of the overarching objectives of this study was to evaluate the viability of implementing computer-mediated communicative language learning tasks as a tool for promoting language learning in the ESL classroom. This study also sought to explore how intermediate level international ESL students collaborate in reaching mutual understanding, and whether and how they negotiate meaning when communication problems arise while engaged in these CMC tasks. Another purpose of this study was to test existing frameworks used to describe student interaction and negotiation, as well as to explore the role of task type in learner-learner CMC. Finally, this study sought to determine whether task-based CMC could help us establish a more direct link between negotiated interaction and lexical acquisition. A detailed analysis of the chatscripts as well as the pre- and post-test measures provide strong evidence that learners use a wide variety of communication strategies in an effort to smoothly navigate computer-mediated conversations while engaged in language learning activities. Learners were also found to negotiate for meaning when problems in understanding arose in ways that are similar to those observed in the oral interaction literature. Task type was found to influence learner choices in dealing with unknown lexical items as well as the overall amount of negotiated interaction learners engaged in. Moreover, based on the pre- and post-tests, this study provides strong evidence for a more direct link between negotiated interaction and second language acquisition, specifically the acquisition of lexical items. Post-treatment questionnaire and interview data suggest that learners, while engaged in task-based CMC activities found the experience valid, useful, enjoyable, and virtually stress-free. Based on the findings above, this study concludes that task-based CMC is a viable and effective toot for promoting language development in the intermediate-level ESL classroom. This is especially true when learners are engaged in those tasks that have been shown to elicit high levels of negotiated interaction. Further, in view of the favorable ratings by students, task-based CMC seems to offer a positive affective environment, which compliments the communicative language learning experience.

A recent innovation in language testing involves the use of computer-mediated communicative language tests i.e., assessment of individuals' second language ability from transcripts of their interactions via computer-mediated communication (CMC). Studies have shown that such interactions in the first language involve a hybrid discourse with features of both written and spoken language, which suggests the possibility of making inferences about oral language ability from performance in a CMC environment. The literature to date offers little guidance on this matter. Research on computer-mediated communication has focused on its use in the second language classroom rather than in a testing context while studies of the linguistic and interactional features of second language learners' CMC discourse have mostly been descriptive with little direct comparison of CMC and face-to-face discourse. This study, therefore, examines the validity of making inferences from computer-mediated discourse to oral discourse through a comparison of the performance of 24 third-semester French students on two tests: a computer-mediated communicative French test; and its nearest equivalent format in face-to-face testing, the group oral exam. Using a within-subjects design, counterbalanced for testing condition and discussion topic, the present study focuses on five areas which have important implications for validity: (a) the predictability of ratings of pronunciation on the group oral test; (b) the similarity of scores achieved on the CMC and group oral tests; the presence of similar (c) linguistic and (d) interactional features in the discourse of both tests; and (e) students' attitudes to the two tests. Results show that although scores on the two tests showed no statistically significant difference, students' discourse differed in many respects which would, thus, invalidate any inferences made about oral ability from computer-mediated performance. Moreover, this study raises an important question about the role of computer-mediated communication in promoting second language acquisition since the computer-mediated discourse contained fewer examples of the negotiation of meaning routines that interactionist theories hold to be important to language acquisition.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in statistics education at the college level in the United States. This study employed meta-analysis to integrate the findings from 25 primary studies which met a specific set of criteria. The primary studies were selected from journal articles, ERIC documents, and dissertations. Results of the meta-analysis produced an overall effect size estimate of 0.43, indicating a small to medium positive effect of applying CAI in teaching college-level introductory statistics on students' achievement. Several study characteristics were examined for the association with the effect magnitude. These characteristics included the publication year, the publication source, the educational level of participants, the mode of the CAI program, the type of CAI program, the level of interactivity of the CAI program, the instructional role of the CAI program, and the sample size. The results of the analogous analysis of variance showed that different modes of CAI programs produced significantly different effects on students' achievement in learning statistics. Expert systems and drill-and-practice programs were the most effective modes and were followed by multimedia, tutorials, and simulations. Computational statistical packages and web-based programs were the least effective modes. The teacher-made CAI programs were significantly more effective than the commercially-developed CAI programs. The effectiveness of CAI program in teaching statistics did not differ significantly according to the study characteristics of the publication year, the publication source, the educational level of participants, the level of interactivity of CAI program, the instructional role of CAI program, and the sample size.

<p>This study replicated a mixed-methods, controlled experimental study conducted in 2010, using a game developed for balance rehabilitation and used with a population of survivors of stroke, to gather more data on the strengths and weaknesses of the rehabilitation tool and opinion of its potential effect as an intervention on persons with Spinal Cord Injury, undergoing outpatient treatment at a spinal cord injury center. This data will provide a base for further improvements in the design and use of the tool in therapeutic settings. </p>

<p> Since being introduced into classrooms in the late 1990s, online instruction has grown substantially both in student enrollment and the number of programs offered at state, district, and multi-district levels. Although having been applied liberally to all core subjects and many supplemental subjects, online instruction has yet to be utilized extensively in the musical arts. Courses in music performance present a unique set of technological and logistical challenges when adapted to an online setting. Nevertheless, private music teachers have utilized Internet resources extensively. Similar techniques applied to public school music programs, however, have yet to be explored thoroughly. Utilizing a combination of asynchronous instruction and synchronous instruction for teaching online music performance courses offers a potential for study and development. </p><p> The purpose of this study was to establish the feasibility of an online music performance course that included both asynchronous and synchronous instruction. An approach that utilized both a multimedia blog format and real-time video instruction was developed, implemented, and delivered to a limited group of trombone students as a pilot study. Nine students participated in online trombone lessons that focused primarily upon the development of performance fundamentals. The delivery of content was assessed to determine a feasible format for music performance instruction in an online setting. Although typical technological shortcomings were experienced during instructional settings, students were able to identify, explain, and apply concepts gleaned from the blog and real-time video lessons. </p><p> Internet-based resources have been applied to independent and collegiate music performance instruction; pedagogical approaches, however, have not been developed for use in secondary level online learning programs. Consequently, online music performance instruction has not evolved as rapidly as online instruction of core academic subjects. As technological advances become available, the possibility for delivering online instruction in areas of the performing arts, and especially in music performance, becomes more feasible and likely will be integrated into the curricula of many online learning programs. Until such time, the implementation of viable online instructional models is essential for the development of traditional music performance courses.</p>

<p> Growing demand for higher education has contributed to the popularity of online education. While online courses can be effective in terms of student learning and success, and there are many potential benefits, there are also still areas that can be improved. There is evidence that students can experience online courses as impersonal and lacking interaction. They can feel isolated, less satisfied, less successful, and are more likely to withdraw. Thus, one of the challenges facing online education is to find ways to increase connection and interaction between students and faculty.</p><p> One means for addressing the sense of isolation students might feel in online courses might be instructor immediacy. While instructor immediacy in traditional classes has been shown to motivate students, create a sense of connection, and support their learning and success, it is not known whether or how immediacy can help students in a fully online course.</p><p> The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental intervention study was to examine the effectiveness of faculty immediacy on undergraduate student engagement and success in an online course. Students in an upper division psychology course were randomly assigned to either a redesigned high immediacy section or a 'regular' section. The study's hypothesized framework suggested that instructor immediacy would enhance student engagement, and thereby influence student success.</p><p> A survey measured immediacy and student engagement; success was measured by total points earned. The sample included 215 students enrolled in the course in the fall 2012 semester. Independent samples <i>t-</i>tests, correlations, multiple regression, and repeated measures ANOVA were the statistical tests used.</p><p> The findings revealed no significant differences between the high immediacy (intervention section) and low immediacy (regular nonintervention group) sections of the course. Immediacy and engagement were highly correlated. Engagement was a significant predictor of student success. Age, units completed, and gender were also significant predictors of student success in this study. These results provide insight into the relationship between immediacy and engagement. Implications and recommendations based on the findings of this study are given. Further studies are recommended to further study the relationship between immediacy and engagement.</p>