The study of emotion has been one of the most important areas of research in the Social Sciences. Social psychology has also contributed to the development of this area. In this article we analyze the contribution of social psychology to the study of emotion, understood as a social construct, and its strong relationship with language. Specifically, we open a discussion on the basis of the gener...

This article looks at social inclusion from a sociological perspective. It argues that sociology complements biological and other natural order explanations of social stratification. The article interrogates a variety of forms of social integration, including ostracism within 5th century B.C. Greece, 19th-century solidarism, and Goffman’s mid-20th-century work on stigma. It does so to demonstra...

Since the earliest studies of social behavior in spiders, their social structure has often bee n compared with that of social insects . A preliminary conclusion was that the degree of evolution o f spider societies was significantly lower than that found in insects . However, we wonder if the problem has been correctly posed . In light of Wilson's and Michener's works, enriched by those of the ...

This article applies the concept of classroom community to asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) by taking on the issue of how best to design and implement a course that fosters community among learners who are physically separated from each other. The following factors that can influence sense of community among distant learners are examined: student–instructor ratio, transactional distance, s...

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (Renato Capuruço). Abstract – There have been a number of frameworks and models developed to support different aspects of interactive learning. Some were developed to deal with course design through the application of authoring tools, whereas others such as conversational, advisory, and ontology-based systems were used in virtual classrooms ...

It is well recognized that utilitarian and hedonic factors are both important in explaining customers’ consumption activities. Recent research has advocated the role of relational factors in affecting the adoption processes. However, no study has examined these three factors simultaneously in one study. We integrate the utilitarian and hedonic benefits of online shopping with the relational ben...

In a recent dissertation study, research was conducted to evaluate online instructors’ characteristics and preferences concerning the use of a telementor, or online instructor’s assistant, as a part on an online course. Those who participated in the anonymous survey came from a sample of two thousand online instructors from colleges and universities located across the United States. Of those co...

As the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) by students in the university learning contexts increases, there is a need to better understand students’ motivations for using CMC and non-CMC media in their learning. By employing the uses and gratifications (U&G) perspective, this paper identified 7 motivation dimensions including information seeking, convenience, connectivity, problem solv...

This article describes a practical approach to judging the nature and quality of critical discourse in a computer conference. A model of a critical community of inquiry frames the research. A core concept in defining a community of inquiry is cognitive presence. In turn, the practical inquiry model operationalizes cognitive presence for the purpose of developing a tool to assess critical discou...

In this presentation I argue that social presence is an important feature of any successful learning activity, particularly within digital learning environments (DLEs). I also contend that the psychological processes that occur during learning should be acknowledged, measured and understood, if we are to design better and more effective DLEs. I argue that social presence and several other key f...