The Role of Teacher Presence during Computer Supported Online Collaborative Sessions in an Adult Education Course.

The convenience sample for this study was taken from an A.E.C. (Attestation of Collegial Studies) Communication course of the Continuing Education Technical Support Program. A key component of this course competency is for students to develop the skill to write business letters for various purposes and to apply the three-step writing process during the crafting of the correspondence. This is achieved with a number of writing assignments which are carried out by students working in teams and completing the writing assignments out-of-class. the out-of-class work was convened using the PrimaryPad program to complete two of the writing assignments, which formed the basis of the research. This research uses a case study design that employed a repeated measures method with two conditions (teacher scaffolding vs. no teacher scaffolding). The possibility of an order effect was controlled for by using a counterbalancing of treatment design. A post-treatment questionnaire was used to gather descriptive statistics.

Developing Web Design Skills Through Group Critiquing and Feedback.

The aim of this quasi-experimental research study was to investigate whether guided small-group discussions that involved explaining, analysing or justifying design and followed a modeling session from the teacher could improve students' creativity in web design. The convenience sample comprised of 37 third year students of the ""Publication Design and Hypermedi Technology"" program at John Abbott College in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellvue, Quebec who had enrolled in the Web Design course offered in the Fall semester of 2011. The primary instrument of this study was a set of two assigments for the course. A traditional teaching method was used during the first assignment and a small-group teaching strategy was implemented during the second one. Another instrument used in this research was a questionnaire on willingness to participate in teamwork. The last instrument of this study was a questionnaire on the type of intelligences that students possessed. It is hoped that the knowledge gathered from the study will add to the information about group-work activities and critiquing in particular.