We examined how social antecedents impact students' use of explanations versus evidence to justify arguments using "statistical discourse analysis" on 2028 postings from 87 graduate students in five courses, each participating in four online debates. The results show that students overall were much more likely to justify arguments with…

Online group debates hosted in asynchronous threaded discussions can facilitate critical thinking between discussants (and increase deeper understanding of complex problems) by eliminating the need for turn-taking while formulating and presenting premises to support and challenge claims. Yet to be determined is to what extent does the current…

Because prior beliefs can affect how people argue and respond to controversial claims, in this study we examined how patterns in students' responses posted in online debates were associated with students' initial positions on given claims prior to debate. Students that held initial opposing positions to the claim exhibited the tendency to respond…

Given that grammatical and spelling errors have been found to influence perceived competence and credibility in written communication, this study examined how a student's grammar and spelling errors affect how other students respond to the student's postings in four online debates hosted in asynchronous threaded discussions. Message-response…

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning process exhibited in restrained online debates in terms of to what extent each of Bloom's six levels of cognitive learning were exhibited among four types of message (argument, critique, evidence, and explanation). Thirty-three graduate students enrolled in an online entry-level course in…

This study examined some of the methodological approaches used by students to construct causal maps in order to determine which approaches help students understand the underlying causes and causal mechanisms in a complex system. This study tested the relationship between causal understanding (ratio of root causes correctly/incorrectly identified,…

In asynchronous threaded discussions, messages posted near the end of the week provide less time for students to critically examine and respond to ideas presented in the messages than messages posted early in the week. This study examined how the day in which messages are posted (early, midweek and weekend) in computer-supported collaborative…

This study examined how message-response exchanges produced in the interactions between active learners only, reflective learners only, active-reflective learners and reflective-active learners affected how often active versus reflective learners posted rebuttals to arguments and challenges across four types of exchanges that believed to promote…

This case study examined interaction patterns between men and women and the effects of the patterns on gender participation in online debates. Students labeled messages to identify each message as an argument, challenge, evidence, or explanation when posting messages to the debates. The results revealed no differences in the number of male and…

This study examined the effects of message constraints and labels on collaborative argumentation in asynchronous online discussions. Thirty-eight undergraduate students in an introductory educational technology course were assigned to one of three groups. In one group, students posted specific types of messages using a prescribed set of message…

This paper proposes a set of methods and a framework for evaluating, modeling, and predicting group interactions in computer-mediated communication. The method of sequential analysis is described along with specific software tools and techniques to facilitate the analysis of message-response sequences. In addition, the Dialogic Theory and its…

Describes the nature of online chats in terms of how graduate students structured their conversations in online group discussions, and how they participated and conversed in and across concurrent conversations. Characteristics of the computer medium contributed to the conversational structures and the kinds of structures affected interactivity and…

This study examined the effects of pre-structuring discussion threads on group performance in computer-supported collaborative argumentation where students labeled their messages as arguments, challenges, supporting evidence, and explanations on a threaded discussion board. In the pre-structured group students were required to post supporting and…

This study examined the effects of response time and message content on the growth patterns of discussion threads in computer-supported collaborative argumentation. Event sequence analysis was used to measure response times between threaded messages and responses containing arguments, evidence, critiques, evaluations, and other comments from…