to virtual courses, and learning communities. In this paper we present a synthetic summary of five studies that explored social climate issues in synchronous and asynchronous online activities in academic courses, focusing on the following questions: Does a social atmosphere develop in online learning

t by obtaining a product, consuming (unevenly) part of it, and accumulating the surplus for investment, according to socially decided goals. Consumption is the appropriation of the product by humans for their individual bene t. Analytically, it is a component of the production process, seen from the reverse side

implications for different adult outcomes so that human capital production should not be considered by economists as a simple one-dimensional process. Age ten conduct disorder predicts male adult unemployment particularly well but it is self-esteem that predicts male earnings. For women the locus of control

, by providing a sense of direction (vision) and expressing high expectations and confidence in followers' ability to meet these expectations Second, transformational leaders increase followers' social identification with their group. Social identification is the process by which individuals identify

The focus of this paper is on social media in teacher education in relation to the use of social media for building a professional online presence and learning network. This paper relates experience and insights drawn from my own work as a teacher educator experimenting with social media

A bstract Critical thinking is a highly desirable goal of online higher education courses. This article presents qualitative data from a mixed-method study that explores how asynchronous discussions within online courses influence critical thinking among students. In this study, online discussions

of regression analysis showed that the strongest predictor of academic achievement in online peer learning was performance expectancy followed by collaboration, social influence, and engagement. An online peer learning influences significantly on academic achievement. Decision makers were advised to support

It is widely accepted that the social capital of students – developed through their participation in learning communities – has a signif-icant impact on many aspects of the students ’ learning outcomes, such as academic performance, persistence, retention, program sat-isfaction and sense

predictor of academic performance and social behavior. The role of motivation in mediating relations between teaching dimensions and social behavior and academic achieve-ment also was examined; evidence for mediation was not found. Relations of teaching dimensions to student outcomes were the same

component of this problem is the prevalence of conversational questions, identified both by Q&A sites and academic literature as questions that are intended simply to start discussion. For example, a conversational question such as “do you believe in evolution? ” might successfully engage users