Investigating Students' Reflective Thinking Level in Online Discussion Forum

Abstract

Modern society is becoming more complex, information is becoming available and is changing rapidly, impelling users to constantly rethink, switch directions, and change their problem-solving strategies. Henceforth, it is important to harness a student's reflective thinking in order to help him apply new knowledge in complex situations. The purpose of this study was to examine students' reflective thinking skill levels in online discussion forums via the E-learning. By adopting content analysis, a thematic analysis based on unit of meaning was conducted. This scheme consists of four levels of reflective thinking: stimulated reflection, descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection and critical reflection. This study was carried out in five weeks, involving among others, 34 undergraduate students enrolled in the Web Based Multimedia Development course. The inter-rater reliability was calculated and found satisfactory, with 94 percent of agreement. This study shows an increment of high levels of reflective thinking: dialogic reflection (increased by 13.98 percent) and critical reflection (increased by 19.81 percent). On the other hand, low levels reflective thinking decreased: stimulated reflection (decreased by 6.44 percent) and descriptive reflection (decreased by 27.35 percent).