<p>This thesis tells the story of a design case creating an user interface for a MMORPG where the player are able control the body language of the avatar. By this the game can achieve a gameplay about drama and strong characterization. The thesis addresses considerations on what aspects of body language that can be important for computer games and other virtual environments. It also offers design considerations when designing interfaces for using gestures and other body signals to communicate emotions in virtual environments such as computer games. The main design consideration when creating the interface was to treat the player as an actor and the game world as a stage. The player needs to be in control of combinations of facial expressions, body posture and gestures as well as relative avatar positioning to other characters and objects. The interface was first tested as a paper prototype, re-designed, re-tested and then implemented into a computer prototype.</p>

<p>Purpose/aim: The purpose is to get increased knowledge about how the communication had developed from the first contact online to the first meeting in real life and even after when it had turned into a real relationship. I also wanted to know why the eight women I interviewed experienced that the Internet is a good venue to meet and develop a real relationship at and if there existed any differences between those four women who were a bit older and those four women who were young.</p><p>Material/method: When the purpose with this survey stood clear I decided to use interviews as the method to find out more about my subject. I decided to do eight interviews and I contacted eight women who all found their partners online that were willing to help me and answer my interview questions. I did six of the total eight interviews through MSN Messenger and the other two through the telephone.</p><p>Main results: I found out that three of the older women had used e-mail and telephone and sometimes SMS communication to find out more about their soon to be partner and after that decided to meet the other person in real life. One of the older women and all four of the younger ones had used a Community and Instant Messenger to communicate with their soon to be partner, they also used the telephone and SMS to communicate with each other but Instant Messenger was the medium that dominated in their wish to communicate. Those instant messenger communications were also a difference that I came to see between how the younger and older women communicated and the fact that three of the older women told me that they had used the Internet to search for a partner while one of the older women and all of the younger ones told me they didn’t search for anyone at all it just happened that they found someone and came to like that person.Keywords: Internet dating, instant messaging, Community, computer mediated communication, telephone communication, face to face communication.</p>

Purpose/aim: The purpose is to get increased knowledge about how the communication had developed from the first contact online to the first meeting in real life and even after when it had turned into a real relationship. I also wanted to know why the eight women I interviewed experienced that the Internet is a good venue to meet and develop a real relationship at and if there existed any differences between those four women who were a bit older and those four women who were young. Material/method: When the purpose with this survey stood clear I decided to use interviews as the method to find out more about my subject. I decided to do eight interviews and I contacted eight women who all found their partners online that were willing to help me and answer my interview questions. I did six of the total eight interviews through MSN Messenger and the other two through the telephone. Main results: I found out that three of the older women had used e-mail and telephone and sometimes SMS communication to find out more about their soon to be partner and after that decided to meet the other person in real life. One of the older women and all four of the younger ones had used a Community and Instant Messenger to communicate with their soon to be partner, they also used the telephone and SMS to communicate with each other but Instant Messenger was the medium that dominated in their wish to communicate. Those instant messenger communications were also a difference that I came to see between how the younger and older women communicated and the fact that three of the older women told me that they had used the Internet to search for a partner while one of the older women and all of the younger ones told me they didn’t search for anyone at all it just happened that they found someone and came to like that person.Keywords: Internet dating, instant messaging, Community, computer mediated communication, telephone communication, face to face communication.

The growing role of communication using computers in people’s everyday lives is reflected by the debates about massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft and the Internet as a whole. While people may be driven by the same psychological drives that have spurred interaction between people in the past, this interaction is increasingly facilitated with the use of computer mediated communication (CMC). Can strong relations form between people that are separated by great distances in space using CMC? The presence of strong relations in MMOs could open the possibility for MMO communities to thrive. A social network analysis of a MMO guild with 50 members was conducted using an online survey, which produced a non-response rate of 50 percent. Participants were asked about their age, the time they had spent in the guild and their gender in order to explain the social structure of the networks. They were then asked to state the strength of their relations with each of the other members of the guild on a scale from ―one, neutral‖ to ―five, strong friendship‖. The social network analysis program Pajek was used to investigate the characteristics of the social network using so called sociograms. The essay concludes that numerous strong relations exist within the guild and that a long time spent in the guild increases the number of strong relations a guild member has. The results show that guilds may form the cohesive backbone of MMO communities and proposes that future research be conducted on the brokerage between guilds in MMO communities in order to produce a comprehensive view of the social structure of MMO communities.

El coneixement professional és epistemològicament diferent a d'altres tipus de coneixement; el coneixement professionalitzador ha de permetre als estudiants gestionar situacions de la seva pràctica professional. En aquest sentit, el coneixement professionalitzador implica unes demandes superiors en comparació a d'altres tipus de coneixement. L'objectiu d'aquesta tesi doctoral és analitzar la naturalesa del coneixement professionalitzador i el canvi en el discurs professionalitzador en entorns l'aprenentatge en línia. Analitzar la naturalesa del discurs professionalitzador permet conèixer quins factors estan implicats en la construcció del coneixement professional i ajustar els entorns d'aprenentatge en línia. Aquesta tesi doctoral descriu els resultats de l'anàlisi de quatre casos relatius a la construcció del coneixement professionalitzador en el camp educatiu. Els resultats obtinguts ens mostren que el discurs professionalitzador construït amb mediació de les tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació (TICs) està estructurat entorn una part molt petita dels tòpics de discurs professionalitzador (menys del 5%). També hem evidenciat diferencies rellevants evidenciades en funció del tipus d'activitat d'aprenentatge, el tipus de contingut i l'escenari de la tasca (tàcit o explícit). Pel que fa al canvi del discurs professionalitzador, els estudiants expressen tensions en la seva concepció de la pràctica i interaccionen com una comunitat de pràctica professional amb diferents característiques depenent del tipus d'activitat, el tipus de contingut i l'escenari de la tasca. / Professional knowledge is epistemologically different from other kinds of knowledge. Students are considered to have built academic discourse when they are able to produce speech based on concrete academic content whereas professional knowledge should enable students to manage situations in professional practice. In this sense, professional knowledge is more demanding than other kinds of knowledge. Our objective was to analyze the nature of professional knowledge and change in professional discourse in the framework of online learning environments. Analyzing the nature of professional discourse helps us understand the characteristics that make it special and that relate to managing situations in professional practice. Analyzing change in professional discourse enables us to know which factors are involved in building professional knowledge and to adjust online learning environments accordingly. This paper describes the results of an analysis of different cases related to the construction of professional knowledge in the educational field. The results we obtained show us that professional discourse built using ICT is structured by a very small fraction of identified topics of professional discourse (less than 5%), furthermore, relevant differences are evidenced depending on the type of learning activity, kind of content and task scenarios conducted (tacit or explicit). Regarding change in professional discourse, students expressed tensions in their conception of practice and interacted as a structured professional community although different characteristics depending on the type of activity, kind of content and task scenarios were observed in all cases.

Topics within small-group communication have been explored in many contexts, such as work group, organizational meeting, or online network. This area of discipline is considered crucial because this type of communication assimilates interpersonal relations within a social setting. Two elements that largely affect small-group communication dynamics are anonymity and social identity. This research invokes previous research in anonymity and social identity within small-group communication pertaining to the level of agreement and the level of group attraction through a series of experiments. Anonymity in small-group communication context is defined as a condition where the group members are not identifiable. To create anonymity among group members, this study utilized the benefit of a chat room in computer-mediated communication (CMC), which allows group members to participate in group discussion anonymously without the fear of being judged. It is argued that groups communicating synchronously via CMC would have a higher agreement than those communicating face-to-face (FtF) because the anonymity in CMC eliminates all of visual cues and therefore, unites all group members. It is also argued that members in groups in FtF are more likely to be interpersonally attracted than those in CMC. Thus, members communicating via FtF would have larger cumulative group attraction than those in CMC. Meanwhile, social identity in small-group communication context is defined as the tendency of a group member to associate with fellow members who share similarities with him or her and hold prejudice against members who are different than him or her. The element of social identity that was being activated in this study was the gender identity. This was done through using a gender-related case, an opinion scale, and distributing participants into groups of different gender compositions. It is argued that single-gender groups would have higher level of agreement and group attraction than mixed-gender groups. The experiment assigned participants into six different groups. The groups communicated via FtF or via CMC. In each setting, there were male-only groups, female-only groups, and mixed-gender groups. The only statistically significant result from the experiments suggested that in CMC, female-only groups had a higher level of agreement than mixed-gender groups. However, there were also differences of mean agreement between female-only groups in FtF and female only groups in CMC. Those communicating via CMC had higher agreement. In terms of level of group attraction, there was not any significant result in any condition. This finding suggests that in CMC, groups that are exclusively females are more conducive than other gender compositions in reaching agreement. Meanwhile, the lack of significance in group attraction between FtF and CMC suggests that people have become more familiar with anonymous CMC settings allowing them to substitute the available textual cues for visual cues.

This essay deals with the subject of communication through Facebook. In this survey we studied 100 youths from Karlstad and their communication habits and behavior patterns on Facebook. The social network site Facebook has since its start in 2004 made a mark in modern communication. Today in 2010 the site has more than 500 million users. This paper wants to study what happens to other types of communication. Has the increased use of computer-mediated communication led us away from face to face or has it encouraged us to use face- to face communication more often? Our target group for this study is people attending their final year in high school. In this study we have been using both qualitative- and quantitative methods to collect our data. The result of the study suggests that a big part in our target group is happy to use Facebook or other computer-mediated sites as ways of their communication. Partly because they think it is a convenient way to communicate but also because they find it easier to get in touch with people, both close friends and people they have never met, by using computer-mediated communication instead of face-to-face communication. Virtually all in our target group suggests that Facebook has helped them in their communication and that they are more social now than before. This paper also has sought to illuminate if shy people can be helped to establish social ties through computer-mediated communication.Keywords: Facebook, communication, face-to-face, computer-mediated communication and shyness

This dissertation investigated Taiwanese English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners' incidental noticing and their subsequent language learning in relation to learner proficiency level and dyadic type in a text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) environment. Sixty participants were included to form 30 dyads. At random, eight low-intermediate and eight advanced nonnative English speakers (NNESs) were paired with 16 native English speakers (NESs) to form 16 NES-NNES dyads; another 14 advanced NNESs and 14 low-intermediate NNESs were paired to form 14 mixedproficiency NNES-NNES dyads. The results revealed that the synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) medium could, in general, enhance the occurrence of learners' incidental noticing and their subsequent second language (L2) learning regardless of learners' proficiency levels and dyadic types. No significant differences were found in the amount of the language-related episodes (LREs) produced by the NES-NNES dyads when compared to the NNES-NNES dyads. With regard to the number of LREs generated by the learners of different proficiency levels, the results showed that: (1) in the NESNNES dyads, no significant difference was found between the low-intermediate and advanced learners, and (2) in the NNES-NNES dyads, the low-intermediate learners produced a significantly greater number of LREs than their advanced interlocutors. In terms of the effect of interlocutors' proficiency levels on the number of LREs produced by the learners, the results revealed that: (1) the low-intermediate learners in the NESNNES dyads produced a significantly greater number of LREs than the low-intermediate learners in the NNES-NNES dyads, and (2) the advanced learners in the NES-NNES dyads also produced a significantly greater number of LREs than the advanced learners in the NNES-NNES dyads. With respect to the learners' performance on both posttests, the results of chi-square analyses showed that: (1) no significant differences were found both within and across the two dyadic types, and (2) no significant differences were found between learners of different proficiency levels within and across both NES-NNS and NNES-NNES dyads. Logistic regression analyses revealed that five LRE characteristics (type, source, complexity, proficiency, and successful uptake) in the NES-NNES dyads and three LRE characteristics (proficiency, timing and successful uptake) in the NNES-NNES dyads were shown to be significant predictor variables of the learners' subsequent L2 learning. Successful uptake was the most prevalent predictor variable of the learners' subsequent L2 learning across the two dyadic types. Besides, proficiency appeared to be the second prevalent variable but played a different role in these two dyadic types. Considering the language aspects focused in the LREs, negotiations on the linguistic features of grammar, vocabulary, and spelling were much more prevalent than the pragmatic aspects of language.

This study analysed the students&rsquo / perceptions about the web based instruction in a blended learning environment. Students&rsquo / perceptions, expectations and comments about their blended learning experiences, course web site and their communication experiences with the instructor were investigated. This case study was conducted within the Information Technology in Education II Course (CEIT 112). This course was delivered for the undergraduate course at the Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department (CEIT), Middle East Technical University, during the 2004-2005 Spring semester. Number of the participants was 25 and all of them were first year CEIT students. This course was delivered as a blended learning which combined face-to-face instruction with the web based instruction. The questionnaire was used to identify the students&rsquo / perceptions about the web based course at the end of the semester. Interviews were conducted at the end of the semester in order to take students&rsquo / comments, expectations and recommendations with respect to the course. Also, an interview was conducted with the instructor to identify his perceptions about the blended instruction experiences at the end of the semester. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered at the end of the semester. Data results showed that students had positive perceptions about the blended learning environment and to some extent neutral about the effectiveness of the course website. According to the instructor&rsquo / s point of view, the blended learning was beneficial for the students, but the efficient utilization of computer mediated communication would be better supported. This study can contribute the following research studies related with the blended learning. Also, the instructor of the course can benefit from this research result in order to improve the productivity of the course for the next terms.

This study aims to investigate the preservice teachers&rsquo / perceptions about online communication in blended learning. The study tries to understand strengths and weaknesses of online communication from the learners&rsquo / point of view. To reach this aim, four research questions are asked: (1) What are the learners&rsquo / perceptions about the online synchronous communication tool? (2) What are the learners&rsquo / perceptions about web-based support? (3) What are the learners&rsquo / perceptions about collaboration with online communication? (4) What are the learners&rsquo / perceptions about the roles of the instructor at blended learning as (a) administrator, (b) facilitator, (c) technician, and (d) evaluator? To answer the research questions, a case study in line with action research design was conducted. An undergraduate course in blended learning form was selected as a case and both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools were utilized throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, data about perceptions was collected via four questionnaires and interviews with the students. Both qualitative and quantitative results showed that the online communication facilities in the case were perceived to be adequate by the students. Yet, the students reflected diverse thoughts about preference of communication modalities in synchronous communication. Moreover, the value of asynchronous communication was pointed out. It is concluded that communication needs, communication partner and other contextual factor have impact on selection of communication modalities.