This study examined the role of a social network site (SNS) in the lives of 11 high school teenagers from low-income families in the U.S. We conducted interviews, talk-alouds and content analysis of MySpace profiles. Qualitative analysis of these data revealed three themes. First, SNSs facilitated emotional support, helped maintain relationships, and provided a platform for self-presentation. S...

OBJECTIVES Social media are online tools that allow collaboration and community building. Succinctly, they can be described as applications where "users add value". This paper aims to show how five educators have used social media tools in medical and health education to attempt to add value to the education they provide. METHODS We conducted a review of the literature about the use of social...

The increase in life expectancy (LE) observed in Western societies, has resulted in a steep rise of older population. This stresses the importance of the research on aging, to better adequate health and social care organization and improve the quality of life (QoL). The aim of the EPEPP-1 (abbreviated from the Portuguese name: Estudo do Perfil de Envelhecimento da População Portuguesa) study wa...

This study examines the relationships between cognitive styles of field dependent learners with their attitudes towards e-learning (distance education) and instructional behavior in e-learning instruction. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and the attitude survey (for students’ preferences) towards e-learning instruction as distance education was administered to 157 students enrolled in va...

n Brazil, nursing professionals are trained based on the perspective of professional competencies. The objective of this exploratory, descriptive study was to identify the critical-emancipator potential of the competency, as described by the Brazilian Ministries of Education and of Health. The sources used for data collection were the regulating documents of technical professional education of ...

Achieving student participation has been argued as one of the most important challenges in distance education. This explorative study examines whether a synchronous communication medium, instant messaging (IM), may enable students to participate more actively in online group work. When comparing two groups that adopted IM with two groups that did not, it was found that the adopters were related...

Objectives: This study explored how social physique anxiety (SPA) combined with different patterns of motivation regulations might facilitate versus deter effort and enjoyment in physical education (PE) and leisure-time physical activity. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Methods: High school students (N 1⁄4 298; Mage 1⁄4 15.72, SDage 1⁄4 1.24 years) completed an in-class survey including SPA in ...

book social media are reading communities primarily developed as online social networks. this study aims to find precise criteria and indicators for evaluation of book social network and examine and rank the most popular book social networks. the sample population included 10 english and two persian book/reading social networks publicly available on the web. a checklist containing 9 main criter...

As the new network computer technology forces into every aspect of daily life, many things change in a rather rapid way, compared to what we were used to until recently. One of the most important aspects in the social activity of people, Education, could not be an exception. Advances in network infrastructures and telematics services, combined with multimedia techniques and powerful personal co...