Meyer, K.A. (2010). A Study of Online Discourse at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Innovative Higher Education (2010) vol. 35 pp. 143-160.

Abstract: Given the explosive growth of online communications, new forms of discourse are an intriguing topic of study. This research focused on ten online discussions hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, using content and discourse analysis of the postings to answer several questions. What is the “conversational scaffolding” used by posters in higher education-related online discussions? Are academic online discussions more like speech or writing? Additional questions dealt with how posters identify themselves, who their audience is, what motivates them, how accurate and political they are, and what the experience of reading these online discussions is like. Based on the analyses, these posters were more likely to write correctly although with diary-like personal insights. Through the analysis I also identified both positive and negative aspects of the online discussion experience.

I'd maintained a personal home page with handy links and utilities for years, but gave it up when iGoogle etc... came along. In my current attempts to withdraw as much as possible from The Allseeing Eye of Google, I've resurrected a personal homepage. I found a copy of my old one from 2003 on a backup CD. Oh, the ugly. It burns. So, I created a new one from scratch.

Guan, Y.H., Tsai, C.C., & Hwang, F.K. (2006). Content analysis of online discussion on a senior-high-school discussion forum of a virtual physics laboratory. Instructional science. 34 (4) pp. 279-311

In this study we content analyzed the online discussion of several senior-high-school groups on a forum of a virtual physics laboratory in Taiwan. The goal of our research was to investigate the nature of non-course-based online discussion and to find out some useful guidelines in developing such discussion forums for learning purposes.

Kanuka, H. & Anderson, T. (1998). Online Social Interchange, Discord, and Knowledge Construction. Journal of Distance Education. 13 (1) pp. 57-74.

This study presents the results of an exploratory multi- method evaluation study and transcript analysis of an online forum. The researchers used a constructivist interaction analysis model developed by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997)¹

Gunawardena et al.’s phases:

1. Sharing/comparing of information
2. Discovery and exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among the ideas, concepts, or statements advanced by different participants.
3. Negotiation of meaning and/or co-construction of knowledge.
4. Testing and modification of proposed synthesis or co-construction.
5. Phrasing of agreement, statenient(s), and applications of the newly constructed meaning.

Not sure if it's actual "truth" (or is it just truthiness?) but this is a pretty interesting animation/presentation by TheRSA.org and Cognitive Media on motivation in the workplace, and what drives innovation. It probably won't display in the RSS feed, so here's a direct link.

Garrison, D.R. & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2005). Facilitating cognitive presence in online learning: interaction is not enough. The American Journal of Distance Education. 19(3). 133-148.

This study assessed the depth of online learning, with a focus on the nature of online interaction in four distance education course designs.

Article provides a good background to course design, deep/surface/achievement-oriented learning. The study used a survey (Study Process Questionnaire) to compare changes in learning strategies selected by 75 students in 4 courses in different subjects and levels.

I've been trying to extricate myself from Google's All Seeing Gaze. (for more info on why, see this article linked by @brlamb).

There are plugins and opt-out cookies etc... but all of those work only in the browser. Often, in just a specific browser. I think I've found a better way. No opt-out. Works for any app that touches The Tubes.

Just modify your /etc/hosts file to include the contents of this great shared .hosts file. All requests for nefarious tracking servers will be dumped to 127.0.0.1 (your own computer) rather than routed out to The Big Snoops In The Ether. Some semblance of privacy, without having to opt out in every browser you use.

Hara, N., Bonk, C.J., & Angeli, C. (2000). Content analysis of online discussion in an applied educational psychology course. Instructional science. 28(2). pp. 115-152

The study looked at a graduate-level psychology course that used online discussion as a core graded activity. The researchers looked at:

1. student participation rates
2. electronic participation patterns (what form of interaction takes place when led by students? does it change over time?)
3. social cues within the messages (“it’s my birthday.” etc…)
4. cognitive & metacognitive components of student messages
5. depth of processing - surface or deep - within message posts

While we were ultimately interested in how a community of learning can be built using online discussion, this study was more specifically focused on the social and cognitive processes exhibited in the electronic transcripts as well as the interactivity patterns among the students.

What's the worst that could happen? I mean, to stop drilling, we'd have to stop driving to 7/11. That'll never happen.

More photos on the Big Picture.

(photo by AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Quick notes on chapter 2:

As I was reading the chapter, the phrase "correlation does not equal causation" kept popping into my head.

There was much focus on how higher education is correlated with higher earning potential, and even higher education correlated with even higher earning. BUT, what if higher education was simple a tribal marker, a product of the real causes of higher earning? Things like family wealth, support, intelligence, personal motivation, social success, or any other factors that make individuals generally more successful - and also possibly more likely to seek and attain higher education.

I'm putting together the research proposal for my MSc thesis project, so am eyeball-deep in journal articles while reading up on methodology and background theories. I could have killed a small forest to do this - I've built up a stack of 440 papers that are related to different parts of my project. But, I think I may have only printed one article out of that. I'm using Papers to find and manage them all, and it keeps blowing me away how powerful it is at smoothing the process.

Google has been powering almost all search queries for an eternity in internet years. It knows an awful lot about what we all search for. And they keep pushing into new ways to index data and mine the activity of people.

It started out pretty simple:

• Public content on the web (web page)
• Search queries
• Websites viewed as a result of search queries

And they kept adding individually trackable data on: