Many of our conversations are not planned. Instead, they arise opportunistically as we become aware of the common interests and goals of others. We believe communication tools can be built that leverage knowledge of a user’s goals and activities to make users aware of others relevant to them and their work, with the aim of facilitating this kind of opportunistic interaction. We describe a proto...

BACKGROUND The ability to use the Internet as a reporting tool has created important and timely changes in the way registries all over the world can collect data. This article provides a detailed description of the implementation that converted reporting hospitals in New York State from a manual, paper-based reporting system to an electronic, Web-based case reporting and communication system. T...

UNLABELLED The Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (TMD) questionnaire (Chóliz, 2012) evaluates the main features of mobile phone dependence: tolerance, abstinence syndrome, impaired impulse control, associated problems, excessive use, etc. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to develop a multicultural version of the TMD (TMDbrief) adapted to suit the novel communication tools of smartphone...

Independent tools and fully integrated systems are currently being applied to educational settings, delivering educational content and activities to students. Asynchronous, computer-mediated communications enable students to reflect upon what they are learning, share their thoughts, and read those of others. Such communication tools facilitate active and collaborative learning. Two integrated s...

Health Science teams are increasingly interprofessional and often require use of information communication technology. These shifts result in a need for health science students to learn online interprofessional teamwork skills early in their training. In response, one interprofessional communication skills course was remodelled from traditional Problem-based learning (PBL) to include learning i...

This paper considers the skills that enable teachers to foster interaction and collaboration in online language learning. Drawing on Hampel and Stickler’s (2005) skills pyramid for online language learning and teaching, it presents the pre-service and in-service training programme that Associate Lecturers in the Department of Languages at the Open University undergo in the context of teaching l...

This paper explores a set of usability heuristics developed for the EU FP7 ICT VirtualLife project. The purpose of the project is to create a three-dimensional online virtual world – in the form of a safe, democratic and legally ruled collaboration platform. 3D virtual worlds are a relatively new expression of online communication and collaboration tools. The most essential aspect – usability –...

Keeping track of user’s communication activities in Web-based environments has always been considered a complex task. It requires tracking systems that are capable of efficiently tracking users’ activities and producing tracking data that can be useful to various users. The objectives of this paper are twofold: (i) to present an approach for better observing the different levels of Human & Comp...