The influence of instructional methods on the quality of online discussion

By Heather Kanuka, Liam Rourke, Elaine Laflamme. British Journal of Educational Technology, 2006

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this case study, we examined the influence of five groups of communication activities on the quality of students’ contributions to online discussion. The activities were the nominal group technique, debate, invited expert, WebQuest and reflective deliberation. Quality of discussion was operationalised as cognitive presence, a construct developed to investigate the role of critical discourse in higher, distance education contexts. Using the quantitative content analysis technique, the postings of 19 students in an undergraduate university course were assigned to one of the four categories of cognitive presence. Across the five activities, the proportion and number of contributions categorised in the highest phases of cognitive presence was low (20.21%), but was highest during the Webquest and debate activities. There are three advantageous qualities of these two activities, we argue: 1They were well structured. 2They provided clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the students. 3They provoked the students to explicitly confront others’ opinions.

Subfields: Communication, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b9433b6795fa5ec3b2ceadd468f93621af30d334

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Citations in the corpus

Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions (2007, unknown): “…presence for successful online learning (Blignaut & Trollip, 2003; Dixon et al., 2006; Finegold & Cooke, 2006; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005; Kanuka, Rourke, & Laflamme, 2007; Lim & Barnes, 2002; Meyer, 2003; Murphy, 2004a; Pawan et al., 2003; Shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2004; Swan, 2003; Swan &…”
Online and Blended Communities of Inquiry: Exploring the Developmental and Perceptional Differences. (2009, methodology): “Contrary to most previous studies (e.g., Garrison et al., 2001; McKlin et al., 2001; Meyer, 2003; Pawan et al., 2003; Vaughan & Garrison, 2005; Kanuka et al., 2007; Stein et al., 2007), the integration phase was found to be the most active in both online and blended environments.”
Research Based Practices for Improving the Effectiveness of Asynchronous Online Discussion Boards (2018, background): “Kanuka, Rourke, and Laflamme (2007) found that WebQuests (i.e., activities in which students search for resources on the Internet), and debates led to the highest levels of participation and cognitive presence.”
Learning in Communities of Inquiry: A Review of the Literature (2009, background): “Several authors (Fahy, Garrison et al., 2001; Kanuka et al., 2007; McKlin, Harmon, Evans, & Jones, 2002; Stein et al., 2007; Schrire, 2004) have analyzed transcripts of students' contributions to online forums.”