Universities face increasing numbers of students leading to increasingly large lectures, and decreasing interaction and collaboration, which are important factors for learning success and satisfaction. The use of IT can help overcoming this challenge by increasing the interaction in large-scale lectures without massively increasing the workload of lecturers. In this research-in-progress paper, ...

Success in college is not simply a matter of students demonstrating academic ability. In addition, students must master the ‘‘college student’’ role in order to understand instructors’ expectations and apply their academic skills effectively to those expectations. This article uses data from focus groups to examine the fit between university faculty members’ expectations and students’ understan...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically examine how social augmented parameters impact on the effective adoption of Information and communication technology (ICT) by small scale agribusinesses operating in Southeast Nigeria. The relevance of incorporating social imperatives in scholarship focused on technology adoption is due to its role in sustaining the process of adoption and diff...

In face-to-face conversation, participants often give the floor, or the voice, to nonpresent participants – virtual participants. These are made present in the conversation by actual speakers quoting them, voicing them or referring to their opinions. In this paper, we examine instances of such virtual talk. Data are drawn from focus group discussions and public meetings about genetically modifi...

Wiki system has been deployed in many collaborative learning projects. However, lack of motivation is a serious problem in the collaboration process. The wiki system is originally designed to hide authorship information. Such design may hinder users from being aware of task conflict, resulting in undesired outcomes (e.g. reduced motivation, suppressed knowledge exchange activities). We propose ...

This paper focuses on the content analysis, a technique frequently used for the approach of issues concerning asynchronous computer mediated discussion groups in distance education. Despite the fact that this research technique is frequently used, there are still no standards established. There is a variety of approaches, varying both at detail’s level and at the type of categories of analysis ...

People with cognitive impairments have problems organizing their daily life autonomously. A virtual agent as daily calendar assistant could provide valuable support, but this requires that these special user groups accept such a system and can interact with it successfully. In this paper we present studies to elucidate these questions for elderly users as well as cognitively impaired users. Res...

Learning in asynchronous discussion groups: A multilevel approach to study the influence of student, group and task characteristics

This paper is targeted primarily at doctoral students and others considering hermeneutics as a research strategy. Research using hermeneutics was carried out with occupational therapy educators and clinicians in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. A total of 53 participants engaged in focus groups and individual interviews over a one-year. The paper explores hermeneutics as a credible, ...