Associate Professor

My work involves using the Internet to help K-12 students and teachers to better understand disciplinary forms of writing and thinking. For the past several years, my research has revolved around "telementoring" – a unique practice in which knowledgeable adult volunteers work with small teams of students for extended periods of time, to support their work on ambitious classroom investigations. In past work, I demonstrated how this approach could help students learn about scientific research and argumentation. One of my latest projects, funded by the Canadian Council on Learning, involves Grade 11 Social Studies students learning about the discipline of history by investigating whether or not Canada has become a more compassionate country over the last 100 years, with the guidance of volunteer historians. You can learn more about my research, and download related publications and software at www.learningrelationslab.org.

Email: kevin_oneill@sfu.ca

Selected Publications

O’Neill, D. K. (2007). Designing a telementoring program to improve secondary students’ understanding of history. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

 

O’Neill, D.K & Weiler, M.J. (2006). Cognitive tools for understanding history: What more do we need? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 35(2), 179-195.

 

Asgari, M., & O’Neill, D. K. (2005). What do they mean by "success"? Examining mentees’ perceptions of success in a curriculum-based telementoring program. In J. Pascarelli & F. Kochan (Eds.), Creating Successful Telementoring Programs. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

 

O’Neill, D. K., Weiler, M. J., & Sha, L. (2005). Software support for online mentoring programs: A research-inspired design. Mentoring & Tutoring, 13(1), 109-131.

 

O’Neill, D. K. (2004). Building social capital in a knowledge-building community: Telementoring as a catalyst. Interactive Learning Environments, 12(3), 179-208.

 

O’Neill, D. K., & Harris, J. B. (2004). Bridging the perspectives and developmental needs of all participants in curriculum-based telementoring programs. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 37(2), 111-128.

 

O’Neill, D. K., & Polman, J. L. (2004). Why educate "little scientists"? Examining the potential of practice-based scientific literacy. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(3), 234-266.

 

O’Neill, D.K. (2001).  Knowing when you’ve brought them in:  Scientific genre knowledge and communities of practice.  The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10(3).  Hillsdale, NJ:  Erlbaum.

 

O’Neill, D.K. (2001).  Enabling constructivist teaching through telementoring.  Special Services in the Schools, 17(1/2).  Binghamton, NY:  The Haworth Press.

 

O’Neill, D.K., & Harris, J. (2000). Is everybody happy? Bridging the perspectives and developmental needs of participants in telementoring programs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 24-28, New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

O’Neill, D.K., Abeygunawardena, H., Perris, K., & Punja, Z. (2000). The telementor’s guidebook:  A field guide to supporting student inquiry on-line. Final report of Office of Learning Technologies project #89116. Ottawa:  Human Resources Development Canada.

 

O’Neill, D.K., & Scardamalia, M.S. (2000). Mentoring in the open:  A strategy for supporting human development in the knowledge society. Paper presented at ICLS 2000:  International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Ann Arbor, MI.

 

O’Neill, D.K., & Gomez, L.M. (1998).  Sustaining mentoring relationships on-line.  In S. Greenberg & C. Neuwirth (Eds.), Proceedings of CSCW 98:  ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work.  November 14-18, 1998.  New York:  Association for Computing Machinery.

 

 

Research and Development Projects

Awards and Honours

Involvement in the Scholarly Community

Member, Editorial Review Board, Journal of Research on Technology in Education

 

Member, Editorial Board, THEN: Technology, Humanities, Education, & Narrative

 

Member, Association for Computing Machinery and American Educational Research Association.

 

Reviewer for the Journal of the Learning Sciences, the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, AERA SIG-Advanced Technologies for Learning, AERA SIG-Education in Science and Technology, AERA SIG-Computing in Education, International Conference on the Learning Sciences, and the National Science Foundation grants program in Small Business Innovation Research/Technology Transfer.