A Multi-Perspective Investigation into Learners’ Interaction in Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)

Çigdem Suzan Çardak

doi:10.5539/hes.v6n2p61

Abstract

<p>This article focusses on graduate level students’ interactions during asynchronous CMC activities of an online course about the teaching profession in Turkey. The instructor of the course designed and facilitated a semester-long asynchronous CMC on forum discussions, and investigated the interaction of learners in multiple perspectives: learners’ views, participation in terms of quantity, participation in terms of discussed issues and collaborative construction of new knowledge. 14 graduate students were participated in the study and 12 of them were interviewed. Meanwhile, 345 messages sent by the learners and the instructor were analyzed in order to identify discussed issues and social construction of knowledge. The results of the study showed that according to the message numbers and views of the learners, learner-instructor interaction was ahead of learner-learner interaction. Meanwhile, learner-content interaction was sustained by various discussion topics. Though learners’ views related to learner-learner, learner-instructor and learner-content interactions were positive in general, analyzing the contents of the messages didn’t reveal higher levels of co-construction of knowledge according to the Interaction Analysis Model.</p>

Highlights

This article reports a case in which an instructor of a graduate level online course designed and facilitated asynchronous CMCs by following the strategies suggested by Rovai (2007), and investigated the interactions in multiple perspectives to understand the quality of participants’ interactions
The results derived from the interviews and asynchronous CMC records are presented in accordance with the research questions
The theme set derived from the statements of the graduate students and the frequencies for each sub-theme are shown on Table 1

Summary

Introduction

This article reports a case in which an instructor of a graduate level online course designed and facilitated asynchronous CMCs by following the strategies suggested by Rovai (2007), and investigated the interactions in multiple perspectives to understand the quality of participants’ interactions. The perspectives considered in the study for the evaluation of the quality of interactions are learners’ views, participation in terms of quantity, participation in terms of discussed issues, and social construction of knowledge. Because the learners’ perspectives about their interactions might have affected the quality of the CMCs, learners’ views regarding their interaction with the content, other learners and the instructor during asynchronous CMCs were investigated. Because the social interaction (learner-learner, learner-instructor interactions) during CMCs requires explicit participation, the quantity of the learners’ explicit participation was reported. Learners’ interactions were examined in terms of social construction of knowledge by using Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997) since the online course required social construction of knowledge, and the ultimate goal of including asynchronous CMCs into the course program was to encourage social interaction and active engagement of learners in learning

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Conclusion