Many courses are currently delivered using Course Management Systems (CMS). Discussion forums within these systems provide the basis for collaborative learning. In this chapter, we present the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyze the structure of interactions between the students in these forums. Various metrics are introduced for ranking and determining roles, while clustering and t...

Increased interest in web-based education has spurred the proliferation of online learning environments. However, these platforms suffer from high dropout rates due to lack of sustained motivation among the students taking the course. In an effort to address this problem, we propose an incentive-based, instructor-driven approach to orchestrate the interactions in online educational forums (OEFs...

Local conversations online are an important means of building awareness and increasing participation amongst citizens. However, most local websites are restricted to using forums or collaborative blogs as the medium of conversation. We are designing ‘Colloki’, a local conversation system that aims to utilize a set of social and organizational features for a more effective conversational environ...

Rural women in Pakistan, under a small holding system of farming, play a pivotal role in farming. They actively participate in a range of activities related to crop production and livestock management. Rural women remain busy from dawn to dusk in various agricultural activities, including pre-harvest, post-harvest and livestock management. Their participation is well dispersed but less perceive...

Agricultural extension workers’ service has been placed as the central pattern of agricultural transformation in general and smallholder farmers in particular. Due largely to this commensurately known trend, identifying factors that determine farmers’ access to extension workers’ service and the effect of the service on crop yield was found to be imperative. Cross sectional data was collected t...

In this paper, we present a novel approach to scaffolding student participation and learning within discussion forums using student mentors, i.e., course peers with relatively good understanding of a particular domain topic. First, we identify mentors using domain topic models, student discussion profiles, and a similarity comparison of the topics being discussed. Second, we provide an interfac...

the purpose of this descriptive-correlation study was to investigate effective factors on rural people’s non-participation of mahabad’s dam catchment in watershed management projects. the research instrument was structural questionnaire with close-ended questions, which its validity confirmed by panel of academic staff and reliability of questionnaire was confirmed. the target population of thi...

the present study was undertaken to analyze factors affecting farmers' participation in the management of water network in jarghouyeh district in isfahan county. a descriptive correlation research design was adopted for the study. at the field work level, surveying was the basic method which was taken into consideration. the statistical population of the study consisted of about 1810 membe...