No abstract

No abstract

This chapter provides an operational definition of, “effective communication,” that instructors and scholars can utilize to measure successful online graduate course pedagogy strategies. There is not a drought of research on online graduate courses, including studies that focus specifically on communication within the online environment. However, in this chapter a detailed analysis from aggregated research was performed in order to offer new knowledge and insight on how to successfully increase effective online graduate student communication. By the end of this chapter, several questions will be answered: What online instructional technologies do instructors utilize in online graduate courses? What assignments and activities do instructors include in online graduate course curriculum? What level of social presence helps create a learning environment that facilitates effective online graduate communication?

Social networking sites (SNSs) first emerged as online public spaces where individuals could share user-generated content, communicate, and connect. As individuals became more and more invested in online sociality, SNSs diverged into niche platforms that largely govern online sociality, shape social norms, and control user agency. SNSs' impact on individuals' self-identity and performance in both online and real-life settings has been researched and contested. However, this research reveals the affordances of SNSs, which allow users to both experiment with different self-representations and learn the social norms of real-life social situations by being able to mimic the actions and behaviors performed in corresponding SNSs. Because online networking is pervasive in society today, the advantages for connectivity and engagement must be revealed. This research aims to begin this conversation by analyzing two popular SNSs: Facebook and LinkedIn.

Telemedicine is an alternative healthcare delivery mechanism poised to increase access to healthcare. However, telemedicine has received limited uptake and use by patients. Like other health information technologies (HIT), usability is a critical determinant of telemedicine acceptance and use. Users' first impression of telemedicine and understanding of the appropriate use of telemedicine stems from their interaction with telemedicine provider websites. Without sufficient telemedicine communications, users will not perceive telemedicine to be a quality healthcare delivery method or understand how to perform a virtual physician visit. Therefore, evaluating the usability of telemedicine provider websites is needed in order to determine how users interact with them and understand the information and instructions provided. This paper describes a mixed-methods usability study involving content analysis, remote usability testing and think aloud usability testing. Combined, these methods offered increasing degrees of validity, reliability, and fidelity, which researchers are constantly evolving for the health and medicine context. The multidimensional usability testing framework described in this paper can be applied in other fields and can be modified for other technologies and contexts.