Promoting Critical Thinking in Online Discussion Threads: Lessons Learned Teaching Economics

Abstract

This study investigates factors that promote substantive posts and higher order critical thinking in online discussions. The authors compared weekly discussion threads from two online Principles of Macroeconomics courses. One class was considered a low-structure class while the other class was considered a more structured class. Students’ posts were coded following the Gilbert and Dabbagh (2005) coding system. The codes were mapped to Bloom’s Taxonomy. A comparison of means indicate that there was an increase in mean substantive posts from 72 percent in 2008 to 89 percent in 2011. There was an increase in the percentage of posts in higher levels of critical thinking from 11 percent in 2008 to 60 percent in 2011. Analysis of student and instructor posting patterns revealed that structured instructor posts and having a “By Wednesday” requirement promote meaningful online discussions and increased substantive student posts in the higher order critical thinking category. This approach links substantive and quality students’ posts to students’ understanding of the core learning outcomes for the course using Bloom’s taxonomy.