Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Understanding participation behavior in online communities has become increasingly of interest to IS scholars. A central puzzle related to the existence and development of virtual communities is why community members are willing to share their valuable knowledge with other members for free. In other words, what are the factors influencing members’ decisions to participate in discussions? This dissertation theoretically articulates how habit will affect individuals’ participation behavior in online communities. In addition, it proposes that a threshold of behavioral repetitions is required for individuals to develop a participation habit. A methodology of estimating the threshold is also developed. The proposed habit hypothesis is tested empirically using panel data reflecting 130,882 postings by 22,457 members over a 6-month time period. The empirical context is a firm-hosted online community, Dell Community. It includes 115 discussion boards. The results show that a threshold does exist for the formation of a participation habit. Once the habit is formed, it has significantly positive impacts on community members’ participation behavior. In larger and more active online communities, community members demonstrate a stronger habit effect. The effects of habit are also stronger among highly-ranked community members than among low-ranked community members. In addition, the results show that posting behavior in the more distant past has less impact on current posting decisions. This research extends the existing literature on online communities by considering the effects of a new factor, habit. It also deepens the current understanding of habit formation by articulating the role of a threshold on habit formation. / text

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The establishment of online discussion forums and their application to higher education have encouraged the use of online discussion within tertiary teaching. Recent studies related to online discussions have provided different ways of understanding the effect of online discussions on teaching and learning. This study investigates how personal learning is facilitated through various ways of engagement in an online discussion environment. The rationale behind this effort has been the concern that online discussions may be being used only because of the availability and technological opportunities the method provides. Personal learning is generally viewed in the literature as an individual's cognitive and knowledge construction and endeavour to make meaning through involvement and interaction in a community and context. There are, however, great variations in the way individuals engaged in their own learning within a community of learners. Motivation and strategies are also seen as factors that influence to individual level of engagement in online discussions. The findings reveal different types of interactions and highlight different levels of individual participation and engagement in the online discussions. From the findings, the Types of Online Interaction Model is developed to show the different roles that individual might adopt in the online discussion environment. The adopted roles are the individual approaches and actions that contribute to personal learning during the online discussion. The roles are flexible and individuals are likely to move from one role to another when there are reasons to do so. This study also shows the importance of the interactions that enable learning within the community. Two case studies discussed in this thesis illustrate the individual strategies of a provocateur and an eventual participant, which show how different ways of engaging in an online discussion community of learners contribute to individual learning.

This thesis is a discursive and conversation analytic study of how people talk about gender in the context of discussions about leisure. The data comprise a corpus of over 600 pages of transcribed talk-in-interaction from a variety of sources, including dinner discussions, focus groups, informal interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, television talk shows and documentaries. In contrast to most feminist leisure research, I take participants' talk as my starting point. I explore how gender is made relevant by participants and constituted in the course of their discussions, and what these constructions are used to do interactionally. The thesis works on two levels. First, it provides a distinctive contribution to leisure research, sport sociology and psychology. It explores what leisure theorists have themselves constructed as 'the problem' in leisure theory, and demonstrates how a discursive, conversation analytic approach can help transcend some of these theoretical and methodological 'problems' - including the way that the concept of leisure itself might be conceived and studied. It identifies three structuring concerns in feminist leisure theory, and provides a discursive and conversation analytic reworking of each of them: (i) Justifications for the Non-Participation of Women in 'Male-Identified' Activities; (ii) Hegemonic Masculinity; and (iii) Heterosexism. Second, it provides a distinctive contribution to discursive and conversation analytic approaches to gender, by problematizing and developing our understanding of the way femininity, sexism, masculinity and heterosexism 'get done' in talk. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of this approach for feminist leisure theory, discursive psychology and conversation analysis, and challenges researchers with an interest in 'ideology' and 'power' to take this approach seriously. It finishes with some questions for future analysis.

This thesis is concerned with the shaping of pedagogic subjectivities through classroom talk. It addresses a number of research questions, namely: In what ways do forms of intersubjectivity created in classroom talk shape the learning for children in two socioeconomically disadvantaged classrooms? How do teachers??? variant readings of official curriculum documents impact on classroom practices? How might the role of the teacher in such classrooms be usefully understood and articulated? The research described in the thesis draws on socio-cultural approaches to language, learning and pedagogy. Systemic functional linguistics, which models cognition as meaning, provides the major theoretical position together with tools for close linguistic analysis (Halliday 1994, 1999). Vygotsky???s complementary view of learning as the consequence of joint activity in semioticised environments highlights the role of the mediating agent (1978). Bernstein???s theory of pedagogic relations provides a useful framework for understanding the circulation of cultural dynamics through locally situated pedagogic settings (1990, 1996, 2000). The research adopts a case study approach; data comprises talk produced during a complete curriculum cycle in each primary classroom as well as interviews, written texts and official curriculum documents. The analysis proceeds through phases; that is, it initially describes the curriculum macrogenres (Christie 2002) then moves to more detailed linguistic analyses of prototypical texts from each setting. Mood, speech function and appraisal (Eggins & Slade 1997, Martin & Rose 2003) are systems recognised in the SFL model as those which enact intersubjective relations. Close attention to their deployment in classroom interactions reveals much about how broad social roles are enacted, how the moral regulation of the learners is accomplished and how subtle differences in learning take place. The analysis reveals considerable difference in the educational knowledge under negotiation. In one classroom, learners are stranded in localised, everyday discourses; while in the other, learners are given access to more highly valued curriculum discourses. It is argued that the interactive practices which produce such difference result from teachers??? readings of the official curriculum; readings which are shaped by particular philosophical orientations to curriculum, together with features of the local settings and their relations to the official pedagogic field.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Görteborgs Universitet, 2002.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1964. / Joint project with Lila Swell. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Arleen Otto. Dissertation Committee: Sloan Wayland. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-195). Also available in print.