This review focuses on three interconnected socio-emotional aspects of online learning: interaction, sense of community and identity formation. In the intangible social space of the virtual classroom, students come together to learn through dialogic, often asynchronous, exchanges. This creates distinctive learning environments where learning goals, interpersonal relationships and emotions are no less important because of their 'virtualness', and for which traditional face-to-face pedagogies are not neatly transferrable. The literature reveals consistent connections between interaction and sense of community. Yet identity, which plausibly and naturally emerges from any social interaction, is much less explored in online learning. While it is widely acknowledged that interaction increases the potential for knowledge-building, the literature indicates that this will be enhanced when opportunities encouraging students' emergent identities are embedded into the curriculum. To encourage informed teaching strategies this review seeks to raise awareness and stimulate further exploration into a currently underresearched facet of online learning.

This paper reports a study-in-progress examining interactions in the asynchronous discussions of a postgraduate TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) distance subject, focusing on the impact of scaffolding collaborative knowledge construction. Two complementary theories were used: sociocultural theory, which views interaction as essential to the knowledge building process, in particular dialogically between expert-novice, and students as equals; and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which highlights language asa meaning-making resource deployed in social interactions and allows insight into the unfolding construal of knowledge and the interpersonal relationships being enacted. The results confirmed the significant role of the instructor in shaping dialogic opportunities that move learners towards new understandings. Close attention to the unfolding language choices of the participants provides a logogenesis of the online discussion texts, offers fresh insights into the nature of adult learning, and into the complex relationships between the intersubjective and experiential in online learning environments

Assessments in tertiary science subjects typically assess content knowledge, and there is current need to both develop and assess different forms of knowledge and skills, such as communications and digital literacies. A digital explanation is a multimodal artefact created by students to explain science to a specified audience, which is an alternate form of assessment that has potential to develop and assess these other important forms of knowledge and skills. This research draws from perspectives in multimodality, educational semiotics and science education to gain a better understanding of digital explanation as a form of assessment in university science. Data sources include digital artefacts (n = 42), task descriptions and rubrics and pre-/post-interviews (n = 21) with students who created them as a task in a university science subject. Analysis involved identifying the range of media resources used across the data set, seeking patterns in how multiple resources were used and exploring students' perspectives on the task, including their design decisions. A more detailed look at artefacts from three different science learning contexts illustrates that students base their design decisions on the content knowledge being represented, their technical capabilities to generate them and how to engage the audience. Students enjoy this form of assessment and feel that the tasks allowed them to demonstrate different sorts of capabilities than are normally assessed in their subjects. Recommendations for instructors provide guidance for considering this sort of task in tertiary science contexts.

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