Forums and mailing lists dedicated to particular diseases are increasingly popular online. Automatically inferring the health status of a patient can be useful for both forum users and health researchers who study patients’ online behaviors. In this paper, we focus on breast cancer forums and present a method to predict the stage of patients’ cancers from their online discourse. We show that wh...

Computer mediated communication (CMC) provides a way of incorporating participant interaction into online environments. Use of such features as discussion forums and chats enhance collaborative work and learning. For many, however, CMC may be an unfamiliar medium. To ensure a successful CMC event, it is essential to adequately prepare participants for CMC. A proposed four step model prepares pa...

An increasingly large part of online communication is inherently social in nature. This social interaction is limited by the modalities of online communication, which do not convey tone or emotion well. Although some solutions have evolved or have been proposed, they are inherently ambiguous. We present a system, TextTone, for the explicit expression of emotion in online textual communication. ...

Motivated by the increasing popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies in university students learning, this study will explore students’ motivations for using CMC technologies in their learning. By employing uses and gratifications (U&G) perspective, this paper aims to identify dimensions of motivation in students’ CMC technology use. It also proposes that students’ techn...

This study investigated the effects of visualization of participation during computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). It is hypothesized that visualization of participation could contribute to successful CSCL. A CSCL-environment was augmented with the Participation Tool (PT). The PT visualizes how much each group member contributes to his or her group’s online communication. Using a po...

The hyperpersonal model of computer-mediated communication (CMC) posits that users exploit the technological aspects of CMC in order to enhance the messages they construct to manage impressions and facilitate desired relationships. This research examined how CMC users managed message composing time, editing behaviors, personal language, sentence complexity, and relational tone in their initial ...

Abstract: This article reports on three studies that involved undergraduate students collaboratively working on authentic discussion tasks in synchronous and asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication systems (Netmeeting, Belvédère, Allaire Forums). The purposes of the assignments were respectively to develop insight and understanding in a theoretical framework, to co-construct meaningful did...

This chapter provides an overview of current issues and trends related to the impact and integration of computer mediated communication (CMC) and technological innovation in the teaching and learning environments of higher education in the United States. The chapter includes an introduction to the higher education arena, and then focuses on the current learning and teaching environments. Topics...

I would contend, however, that the significance of online communication lies not in its separation from the real world, but on its impact on nearly every single aspect of the real world. Just as there is no such thing as "speechspace" or "writingspace" or "printspace," so there is no cyberspace, and the notion of it is thus not helpful for understanding the very real impact of online networking...

This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the effects of presenting cues that provide information about the interactors – called cues to identity – in computer mediated communications (CMCs). Study 1 shows that even though cues to identity affected interpersonal evaluations, in making them more positive, the presence of these cues were associated with less certainty and less me...