Chatting to Learn: The Changing Psychology and Evolving Pedagogy ...

Chapter 1

Chatrooms and Learning Behaviors

1.1 The Challenges of Online Learning

For a number of reasons, online education is booming. Primary and secondary school students (Setzer, Lewis, & Greene, 2005), college students (I. E. Allen & Seaman, 2003, 2004), and corporate employees (Galvin, 2002) are all engaging more and more in some form of online or blended online/face-to-face education. The majority of college and university administrators in nearly every demographic segment agree that “online learning is critical to the long-term strategy” of their schools (I. E. Allen & Seaman, 2004, p. 2). Distance education universities, with enrollments in the hundreds of thousands, are beginning to venture into using online technologies to support learning (Daniel, 1996).