Electronic Forum Research Articles

ANONYMITY IN ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION GROUPS: EFFECT ON DIVERSITY DISCUSSION*

This article explores the use of an electronic FORUM in a social work diversity class as a way to increase and enhance outside discussions related to contemporary diversity issues. A total of 45 students from two different BSW programs participated in the FORUM. Students were encouraged to remain anonymous during the discussions to enhance the opportunity for honest dialogue. A five-point Likert scale was developed to measure students' perceptions about whether or not their participation in the FORUM was personally beneficial and how anonymity affected their responses. Overall, students felt positive about their experience with the electronic FORUM, and appreciated being able to express their opinions openly without fear of reprisal. They also reported an increased awareness about other cultures, customs, and beliefs.

Las cifras de la documentación en España: 2002

The state of the Spanish LIS profession and specialities in 2002 is reviewed. Statistical data is provided about both the number and type of Spanish libraries and archives as well as of practising professionals, according to geographic distribution, training and job description. Spanish library and information authorities are identified as well as professional associations and learned societies and conferences held. University education is also examined with descriptions of existing institutions, degree levels and data on student enrolment and teachers. The primary media for professional communication are described, in particular, publishers, bulletins, scientific journals and electronic fora. Publishing output is quantified: books, journal articles, and conference papers both at national and international levels. Finally, research in the field is analysed through the total of Ph. D. dissertations presented, research articles published and research projects funded.

Launch of an electronic Forum for national committees on international humanitarian law

Many States have set up National Committees or similar bodies on international humanitarian law (IHL). To assist these bodies in their task of advising and assisting governments in promoting and implementing IHL, the Advisory Service on IHL of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has now launched an electronic Forum. The objective of this new tool is to facilitate the exchange of information and experience between the Committees, to strengthen contacts between them, and to thereby encourage States to take national IHL implementation measures.

SLEEP-L: an electronic forum for the sleep community

SLEEP-L: an electronic forum for the sleep community

Launch of an electronic Forum for national committees on international humanitarian law

Launch of an electronic Forum for national committees on international humanitarian law

Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Sociotechnical Approach

The term community is widely and often uncritically used to characterize groupings of people who meet in electronic forums (e-forums). The research reported here shows how the casual use of the term community to characterize these groups can actually undermine their transformation into forms of social organization that are justifiably characterized as communities. This article examines how transforming a group into a community is a major accomplishment that requires special processes and practices. Primary data come from a particular project, the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), that aimed to develop "communities of practice" (CoPs) among high school science and mathematics teachers through an elaborate dedicated web site. We examine participants' behaviors in some of the differently structured forums within the ILF web site. While the project's developers expected CoPs to develop autonomously, there was no evidence of CoP formation in open public online forums. The article contrasts two approaches to building online communities that differ sharply: "IT-led community development" and "IT-supported community development." The experience of the ILF project shows that IT-led strategies community development strategies are much more difficult to make workable than are the "IT-supported" strategies.

Virtual Togetherness: an Everyday-life Perspective

This article examines the place and value of online relationships and interactions in Internet users' everyday lives. The analysis is based on an in-depth study of the practices of 21 domestic users of the Internet in Vancouver, Canada, focusing on their engagement with electronic forums. The main questions are: Why do users participate in these forums? What does it mean to them? How does it reflect on the public understanding of the Internet? The article offers a typology of different forms of online involvement with others on the Internet. In this light, it questions concepts, such as `virtual community,' and dichotomies - real versus virtual, public versus private - framing the theoretical debate about the social significance of the Internet as a new communication medium.

Challenges to the use of consensus building in integrated coastal management

An electronic forum involving 15 coastal managers was conducted in order to identify and explain the challenges involved in using consensus-building methods to resolve coastal management issues. The forum's participants generated a list of ten challenges. Getting participants committed to the consensus-building process was identified as the major problem. Participants reported four factors that may affect negatively the willingness of participants to commit to the process. These factors are the novelty of consensus building, the lack of incentive to seek a compromise, the apprehension of having to negotiate and the uncertainty of the outcome. The paper concludes with proposed strategies to overcome these factors.

Twenty years of ListServ as an academic tool

While the World Wide Web has garnered massive attention as an academic tool, ListServ has been quietly dominating academic discourse for nearly twice as long and with little fanfare. Each list is a virtual neighborhood defined by common interest, and among them there is a special version frequented by scholars, often referred to in the literature as Scholarly Electronic Forums (SEFs) or Scholarly Discussion Groups (SDGs). ListServ has been the great equalizer, allowing all parties to speak in the same manner, regardless of their level of technology and bandwidth access. The entry barrier has always been lower than other related technologies. Thus, while the hyperbole continues to swirl around the Web as an educational medium, the quiet e-mail message, magnified through the use of ListServ, continues to dominate academic discourse, staying the course after nearly 20 years of service.

A bit more to it: Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio‐Technical Interaction Networks

AbstractIn this article, we examine the conceptual models that help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences, pre‐print servers, field‐wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first present and document the information processing model that is implicitly advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications—the “Standard Model.” Then we present an alternative model, one that considers information technologies as Socio‐Technical Interaction Networks (STINs). STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability of these forums within a field than does the Standard Model. We illustrate the significance of STIN models with examples of scholarly communication forums drawn from the fields of high‐energy physics, molecular biology, and information systems. The article also includes a method for modeling electronic forums as STINs.

“YOUR VIEWS SHOWED TRUE IGNORANCE!!!”: (Mis)Communication in an online interracial discussion forum

In this article I focus on the dynamics of interracial electronic communication by studying the asynchronous posts made by 75 students from across the country to an online Affirmative Action/Diversity discussion forum. Drawing from my textual analysis of the posts and from my interviews with the most active participants—five students from four institutions—I examine the misunderstandings that arose in this interracial discussion, situating the causes and consequences of the students’ discourse within both the local context of the electronic forum and within wider cultural patterns. I show that flaming cannot be easily identified as destructive communication because posts that seem to be violent attacks intended to shut down dialogue may be attempts by writers to educate other, and posts that do not seem to be violent attacks may actually perpetuate an “othering” that is more destructive to interracial communication than online shouting. I conclude by suggesting strategies for facilitating more productive electronic discussions about race and racism.

The Virtual Conference Room: Online Problem Solving for First Year Special Educators

Virtual teams, using existing telecommunications technology, are employed by government and industry to meet the changing needs of the new millennium. The use of virtual teams by business has become part of the new workplace phenomena. Despite their obvious potential, virtual communications in Special Education are limited to electronic mail, video-conferencing, and discussion forums. The use of virtual teams in field of education is largely unexplored. The following is a description of a web-based, virtual, problem-solving process used by teams of Special Educators to address problems encountered by first year teachers. Assessment by team participants indicates that an in vivo problem solving and collaboration process was successfully replicated as an online phenomenon and a representative case, illustrating the process, is presented. A web-site, titled The Conference Room, is proposed as a model for building electronic bridges between teacher preparation faculty and their graduates and for offering confidential consultation, support and mentoring for first year teachers.

Calls for Deliberative Democracy in Japan

Democracies around the world face challenges today. In Japan, the U.S.-style democracy that was transplanted following the end of World War II is at a crossroads. While governing elites are losing ground, it is the people that have to rise to the occasion. The question is how to turn them into civic-minded citizens. The Internet in the form of an electronic forum is emerging as a new educational medium for democratic life.

What Was On SWS's Electronic Forum?

What Was On SWS's Electronic Forum?

Learning from the past and looking to the future

Learning from the past and looking to the future

Beyond Amusement: Reflections on Multimedia, Pedagogy, and Digital Literacy in the History Seminar

To JUDGE BY recent technology-related presentations at the AHA and the slow trickle of related articles, the integration of technology into history teaching is a cautious, contemplative process.' As scholars experienced with the sweeping claims and costs of past revolutions and technologies, it is understandable that historians are cautious about using computer technology in the classroom. Still, recent articles in these pages provide ample evidence of the fruitful application of technologies such as media slide shows, electronic discussion forums, and web resources to enhance the experience of introductory survey courses. In addition, a number of new media projects have become nationally known for their focus on materials and technology created for students.2 These resources include web-based readers, elaborate course web pages, and lectures enhanced with multimedia presentation software.3 In the arena of history teaching it appears that the predominant use of new technology is to enhance traditional instruction and to facilitate the presentation of images and outlines. Student-produced web pages are among the few studentcentered activities favored by historians, but these are not without their critics, some who question the value of teaching technical skills rather than content and others who find the exercise valuable, but very time consuming. Fewer faculty, it seems, have embarked on the difficult path

Electronic Publication and Impact Factors

Space in the printed edition of the European Journal of number, which is printed on the mailing label that accompanies your copy of the journal. EJVES online Vascular and Endovascular Surgery remains at a premium. We reject a large number of papers, and it replicates all that is published in the printed journal, with additional (colour) figures and datasets, where seems a shame that many of these may never see the light of day. We can justify some of these rejections relevant. EJVES online will also have a full search facility, as will our new, parallel online journal because of poor quality, but many of the papers received possess some useful information. This appears EJVES (EISSN: 1533-3167, located at www.harcourt-international.com/journals/ejvx). particularly true of Case Reports, which, although of passing interest to most readers, may help others with EJVES represents a new electronic forum publishing short reports, correspondence, book rethe management of similar patients under their care. Our limited space also means that we cannot publish views, information on forthcoming events and other additional material. A logo in EJVES online will link the full dataset for important trials, which may hamper subsequent meta-analysis. Furthermore, publication of articles to any relevant correspondence. This new initiative will provide a value-added service for correspondence in a monthly journal will always be delayed and thus become divorced from the relevant readers and members by publishing material that we cannot publish in the printed journal due to lack article. The ability to search for an article is also limited, although the final issue of each volume contains an of space and the need to protect our impact factor. Short reports published in will be peer-reviewed in index by keyword and author. Electronic publication now gives us the potential to address all of these the usual way and can be cited through digital object identifiers (DOI), as can articles published in EJVES limitations. Will it mean the death of the print journal? We doubt it, as many prefer a print journal to read at online. The impact factor of a journal is calculated by the leisure. However, they may also require access to an electronic version for more detailed data analysis, Institute for Scientific Information, based in the U.S.A. The impact factor for a given year equals the number literature reviews, etc. Therefore, electronic publication should be viewed as a complement, not a of times the articles a journal publishes during the previous 2 years are cited during that year, divided competition, to the printed journal. The article by Frank Cross in a forthcoming issue will explore the by the number of articles published during those 2 years. For instance, EJVES published 179 articles in additional advantages of the Internet for vascular surgeons. 1997 and 210 articles in 1998. In 1999 there were 161 and 327 citations for these articles, respectively, giving For several years we have posted tables of contents and abstracts of articles published in the print journal an impact factor of (161+327)/(179+210)=1.25. Unfortunately, impact factors seem strongly biased toon our website at www.harcourt-international.com/ journals/ejvs. However, the full text electronic version wards American journals, distorted by specialty and vulnerable to manipulation. For example, specialty of the journal has only been accessible via institutions that subscribe to IDEAL, Harcourt’s online journal journals such as ours that publish many original papers may have a lower impact factor than more general library. From this month, EJVES online (EISSN: 15322165) will become freely available to all individual review journals. Despite these deficiencies, the impact factor may influence the decision of some authors to subscribers via a link from our main website or at www.idealibrary.com. You will need your subscriber submit a paper to a particular journal, even though the

Shared 3-D workplace exhibitions as sites for community meetings

Information exchange and communication in large, distributed organizations is a research project aimed at designing and testing shared, 3-D exhibition environments for geographically dispersed organizations. The research is associated with a long-term project sponsored by the National Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) in which a network for the exchange of organizational skills is created. The research project has tested the usefulness of 3-D environments as an extension of other communication services used in the LO-network, such as regional conferences, printed newsletters, email, electronic discussion forums, and websites. Two design workshops have been arranged in which 17 network members have learned how to build and navigate in the 3-D environment. The workshops resulted in the construction of an exhibition area where different design ideas were tested. Feedback from members was documented in videotaped interviews and an indication of the positive response is given through the groups ongoing additions to the exhibition site.

The Dilemma of Evaluating Electronic Discussion Groups

Electronic discussion groups show great promise as an instructional technique that extends the formal classroom meeting. This article addresses the dilemma of whether instructors should associate assessment schemes with the electronic discussion forum. A coding technique called “cognotes” is presented as an example of how assessment can potentially promote substantive electronic discussions.

Electronic New Jersey: A Model High School-University Web Site Collaboration

How can the quality of humanities instruction and the design of curriculum units in American history and culture be enhanced through the use of archival sources delivered electronically? This question has been the central focus of the Electronic New Jersey project since its inception in 1997, and it is becoming an increasingly significant one nationwide as archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural/historic institutions prepare their holdings for electronic access. Based at the Scholarly Commu nications Center of the Alexander Library at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Electronic New Jersey is a web site comprised of six topical learning modules utilizing unique sources in U.S. history and an electronic discussion forum specifically designed for educators and students. In contrast to large electronic collections of archival sources, which contain hundreds of digital sources but are bereft of integrated learning strategies, the Electronic New Jersey project has from the outset designed its web pages?to integrate historical sources with learning activities. The resulting learning modules illustrate how historians engage those sources to construct the past. This article examines the origins and development of the project and demon strates how collaborative projects can enhance the study of history for young people while also involving faculty, archivists, and librarians in the preparation, delivery, and use of primary sources in classroom instruction.