The Effects of Three Types of Instructor Posting on Critical Thinking and Social Presence: No Posting, Facilitating Discourse, and Direct Instruction
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: As more and more institutions are using asynchronous forums as the main or only means for students to interact online, the need to understand the effects of instructor intervention on learner discourse has become more important. This study will describe the effects of different types of instructor posting on learners’ levels of critical thinking and social presence. The research involved taking 900 learner posts from three differing experimental conditions and analyzing those posts for social presence and critical thinking. The three experimental conditions were no instructor posting, posts containing facilitating discourse, and posts containing direct instruction. The results showed instructor posts that facilitate discourse generate higher levels of social presence when compared to the other two conditions, and instructor posts that contain direct instruction increase critical thinking. These results are important in general, because instructors must be aware of how their behavior may affect how learners interact (and therefore learn) online. More specifically, the types of discourse their learners create, are of interest to many instructors. Therefore, the ways instructors can manipulate learner discourse is of great importance.
Author: Jamie Costley
Institution: Kongju National University
Language: English
Topic: Online and Blended Learning
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1516829761