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In this time of human disconnect brought on by technological advances and cultural changes involving communication, educators sometimes struggle to create communities of engaged learners in the online environment. Davis, Sumara, Luce-Kapler (2008) wrote, “teaching is not about replication but about creating something new through moments of connection and reconnecting with one another, with the past, and with the environment” (p. 13). We will discuss, strategize, and develop plans to create online courses that move beyond asking students to “comply” with evaluation criteria or to repeat information found in instructional materials. During this session, participants will develop course, assignment, and/or lesson plans, focusing on ways to increase instructor presence as well as active, engaged, and authentic teaching and learning via projects, student-to-student interactions, and faculty-student interactions.

In this dissertation, I investigate how online social interactions and user-generated content affect sellers and consumers in online platforms. I conduct three empirical studies to understand the effect of user-generated content in three different types of online platforms: (1) an e-commerce marketplace, (2) an online reviews platform, and (3) an online health community. In study one, I examine how social features (e.g., following others, sharing others’ products) within an electronic commerce marketplace affect status and sales for sellers. This essay contributes to the literature on electronic commerce by deepening the understanding of online social processes among sellers. In study two, I explore how humorous appropriation of an online review platform affects purchase intention and consumer engagement. Utilizing both controlled experiments and analysis of real-world reviews, I demonstrate that humorous appropriation attenuates the effect of review valence on purchase intentions and increases consumer engagement. In study three, I investigate how community ratings are related to patient treatment evaluations and compliance in an online health community. I find that community ratings are positively associated with treatment evaluations and compliance. Moreover, I find that community size and ratings variance moderate the effect of community ratings on treatment evaluations and compliance. Taken together, these essays contribute to the literature on Information Systems by augmenting the understanding of the effects of different types of user-generated content on social (status, engagement, and evaluations) and economic outcomes (purchase intentions and sales). The studies also offer insights for strategic decisions regarding user-generated content in online platforms. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

The purpose of this study was to examine the occurrence of student discourse in asynchronous computer-mediated communication and its relation to student learning. From in-depth investigation of teacher design, facilitation and direction for asynchronous discussion, implications for high school online instruction guidelines and the need for evaluation standards of online courses and teacher instructional practice are made. Examining student discourse provides information related to the social construction of knowledge. Teacher presence and its relation to higher levels of student discourse provides information for best practices in online teaching. This information can be used to determine specific standards and guidelines for evaluation of online instruction which can contribute to quality online high school courses. The context of this study was two high school online AP English courses. The multiple case study approach analyzed student discourse within asynchronous discussion forums and the relation to student learning outcomes. Observation of teacher facilitation and course documents were examined in relation to levels of student discourse and student learning outcomes. Triangulation of data sources included discourse analysis, interviews with teachers, and archival documents. Results from comparing and contrasting multiple cases are presented as basis for implications to guide course design, facilitation and evaluation. / Ph. D.

In this work, we propose a PRivAcy-Diversity-Aware Team Formation framework, namely PRADA-TF, that can be deployed based on the trust relationships between users in online social networks (OSNs). Our proposed PRADA-TF is mainly designed to reflect team members' domain expertise and privacy preserving preferences when a task requires a wide range of diverse domain expertise for its successful completion. The proposed PRADA-TF aims to form a team for maximizing its productivity based on members' characteristics in their diversity, privacy preserving, and information sharing. We leveraged a game theory called Mechanism Design in order for a mechanism designer as a team leader to select team members that can maximize the team's social welfare, which is the sum of all team members' utilities considering team productivity, members' privacy preserving, and potential privacy loss caused by information sharing. To screen a set of candidate teams in the OSN, we built an expert social network based on real co-authorship datasets (i.e., Netscience) with 1,590 scientists, used the semi-synthetic datasets to construct a trust network based on a belief model called Subjective Logic, and identified trustworthy users as candidate team members. Via our extensive simulation experiments, we compared the seven different TF schemes, including our proposed and existing TF algorithms, and analyzed the key factors that can significantly impact the expected and actual social welfare, expected and actual potential privacy leakout, and team diversity of a selected team. / Master of Science / In this work, we propose a PRivAcy-Diversity-Aware Team Formation framework, namely PRADA-TF, that can be deployed based on the trust relationships between users in online social networks (OSNs). Our proposed PRADA-TF is mainly designed to reflect team members' domain expertise and privacy preserving preferences when a task requires a wide range of diverse domain expertise for its successful completion. The proposed PRADA-TF aims to form a team based on members' characteristics in their diversity, privacy preserving, and information sharing so as to maximize the performance of the team. We leveraged a game theory called Mechanism Design in order for a mechanism designer as a team leader to select team members that can maximize the team's social welfare, which is the sum of all team members' utilities considering team productivity, members' privacy preserving, and potential privacy loss caused by information sharing. To screen a set of candidate teams in the OSN, we built an expert social network based on real co-authorship datasets with 1,590 scientists, used the semi-synthetic datasets to construct a trust network representing the trust relationship between the users in OSNs, and identified trustworthy users as candidate team members. Via our extensive simulation experiments, we compared the seven different team formation (TF) schemes, including our proposed and existing TF algorithms, and analyzed the key factors that can significantly impact the expected and actual social welfare, expected and actual potential privacy leakout, and team diversity of a selected team.

This dissertation unites two seemingly unrelated fields, writing centers and technical writing, to study the feasibility of creating an online technical writing resource. Despite prolonged attention to multiliteracies and collaboration in both subfields, writing centers and technical writing do not commonly implicate one another in their shared mission of shaping students to become savvy writers with an awareness of rhetorical concepts and situations. This dissertation establishes how complementary these two fields are based upon their shared pedagogies of collaboration and multiliteracies. I suggest that a service design approach is beneficial to writing center research. Similarly, the technical writing field has little research and scholarship dedicated specifically to online writing instruction and pedagogy. Historically, writing centers have served students from all disciplines, but research demonstrates the effectiveness of specialist over generalist writing support. Taking a specialist perspective, I use service design methodology to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center's mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how OWLs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible. / Doctor of Philosophy / A feasibility study addresses whether or not an idea or plan is good. In the case of this dissertation, the idea is whether or not to offer online writing services—such as tutoring and a repository website—to students enrolled in Technical Writing at Virginia Tech. In order to study the feasibility of this plan, I first argue for bringing together the fields of writing centers and technical writing. Two strong reasons for uniting these fields are based upon their shared methods and practices of teaching collaboration and multiliteracies. Multiliteracies in this dissertation refers to critical, functional, and rhetorical computer literacies; each literacy is important for Technical Writing students to develop as they enter their future careers. Historically, writing centers are places on a college or university campus where students from all disciplines can go for tutoring; this is known as the generalist approach to writing tutoring. However, research demonstrates the effectiveness of a specialist approach—where a tutor is familiar with a student’s discipline—to writing tutoring over generalist writing support. Therefore, I take a specialist perspective in this study. I use service design system of methods to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Service design is commonly used in the service economy, such as restaurants and hotels, in order to design or redesign services. In particular, service design focuses on people and their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service and a website for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center at Virginia Tech is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center’s mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how online writing labs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible.

This research revolves around the rapidly evolving computer-based conferencing technology and the growing need for applications tailored for collaborative environments. It focuses on tools for collaborative processes using an existing software application — CyberQuest as a case study. CyberQuest is a problem solving and innovation support system its main intent being - to help people come up with ideas and with ways to implement them. The objective behind this research is to illuminate the need for desktop based tools for online conferencing, which do more than just audio-video linking and is more than just a simple Internet based "meeting" software. It aims at analyzing the existing CyberQuest software and outline the methodology to be followed to convert it to a Web-based tool for problem solving and innovation support. Chapter 1 describes the existing features of CQ and the reasons as to why this application is suited for adapting to a network environment such as the Internet or an in-company intranet. It elucidates the steps involved in converting CQ to a Web based application and briefly describes the process of how files are processed on the Web. Chapter 3 gives a brief introduction to the Internet and the Web and distinguishes between the two. It also explains what intranets are and the main constituents of a web system. Chapter 4 and 5 explain the conversion issues in detail and list the various scripting languages available and the process of translating the application from Visual Basic into a scripted language. Chapter 6 surveys the results of using an application sharing software to share CQ over 2 or more computers. Lastly, Chapter 7 lists the findings and the future direction of all that is discussed in this study. When fully developed, WebCQ (Web-enabled CyberQuest) would most certainly prove to be a valuable tool for enabling technology that will support collaborators in different disciplines by connecting them to a vast database of information to help them find solutions and improve performance in almost any field. The study also includes a set of re-designed user interfaces for the WebCQ. / Master of Science