Short-term social integration at the initial stage is particularly important for first-year college students and often plays a key factor in determining newcomers' subsequent socialization outcomes. Recent years have witnessed the growing popularization and impacts of online social integration (OnSI) among college students. Drawing on dominant…

Background: Investigating emotion sequence patterns in the posts of discussion forums in massive open online courses (MOOCs) holds a vital role in shaping online interactions and impacting learning achievement. While the majority of research focuses on the relationship between emotions and interactions in MOOC forum discussions, research on…

Background: Many instructors transitioned their courses from face-to-face environments to computer-mediated learning environments (CMLEs) following the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, little was known about how teleconferencing platforms and their corresponding functions affect student learning when the COVID-19…

Machine learning (ML) techniques have been successfully applied to a wide array of applications. This dissertation aims to take application data handling into account when developing ML-based solutions for real-world problems through a holistic framework. To demonstrate the generality of our framework, we consider two real-world applications: spam…

Upvotes serve important purposes in online social annotation environments. However, limited studies have explored the influential factors affecting peer upvoting in online collaborative learning. In this study, we analysed the factors influencing students' upvotes received from their peers as 91 participants utilized Perusall, an online social…

Previous literature has associated math literacy with linguistic factors such as verbal ability and phonological skills. However, few studies have investigated "linguistic synchrony," shown in mathematical discussions. This study modelled math literacy and examined the relationship of math literacy with linguistic synchrony between…

Virtual technologies gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic for use in research, including research with children. As scholarship from the field of science, technology and society (STS) suggests, technologies are never neutral, but embedded with social values and, as such, used by people to navigate identities and relationships. Building…

Social annotation plays a crucial role in nurturing and sustaining a collaborative reading community, offering the potential to enhance students' motivation and performance within socially supportive learning environments. Nonetheless, research on the dynamic changes in student engagement in social annotation remains limited. This study aims to…

In this research, we investigated whether online discussions can significantly benefit students' learning in online courses. We designed an experiment by dividing 129 students who enrolled in four fully online "Introduction to Microeconomics" courses taught by the same instructor into four groups (one control group and three experimental…

Previous studies have shown that personal factors serve as mediators in the link between self-compassion and subjective well-being (SWB). However, these studies have neglected the possibility that online prosocial behavior (OPB) may serve as a mediator in the link between self-compassion and SWB. Based on the PERMA theory of well-being and the…

Cyberbullying has generated interest for researchers in the field of psychology and education in recent years. While most studies have focused on samples of adolescents, the university environment also deserves special attention due to its serious consequences on students. It is therefore very important to prevent cyberbullying in the context of…

This qualitative research study explored levels of social presence in Second Life (virtual world) associated with phases of knowledge construction. The study explored images and data collected from users at two discussion-based activities. The findings revealed the three levels of social presence, according to the Interactional Process Model of…

Instructional Manipulation Checks (IMCs) are intended to detect inattention, a common occurrence in survey responding. We use eye tracking to empirically assess the attention that survey respondents dedicate to a short and a long IMC. We find that all 21 respondents pass the short IMC. In contrast, six respondents fail the long IMC. Our…

The effective use of self-regulation strategies has been considered significant in online learning environments. It is known that learners must be supported in this context. Academic help-seeking (AHS), as one of the main self-regulated learning strategies, is associated with academic success. However, learners may avoid seeking help for…

Recommendations on preventing and addressing school bullying and cyberbullying were developed in November 2020 by a Scientific Committee gathered to advise the International Conference on School Bullying organized by UNESCO and the French Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. They address three key issues: 1) revising the definition of school…