January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

41~50 27 5.0%
51~60 12 2.2%
61~70 4 0.8%
71~80 3 0.5%
81~90 0 0.0%
91~109 3 0.6%
Total 536 100.0%
Table 8. Number of Responses by Message
Number of Responses Number of Messages Percentage of Messages
0 354 66.0%
1 68 12.7%
2 27 5.1%
3 18 3.3%
4 13 2.5%
5 10 1.8%
6 18 3.4%
7 11 2.0%
8~9 14 2.6%
10~13 3 0.6%
Total 536 100.0%
Actually, students selectively responded to peers’ posting according to their interest. They usually responded when
they found a similar opinion and experience or had a different perspective. Students were also reluctant to engage in
directly challenging other students’ opinions. It might result in a high percentage regarding a statement of agreement
and relative weight to disagreement within phase 3. It might reflect the nature of the discussion question that asked
students to select one leadership theory. Students always gave turn-taking to clarify their previous writing when
peers’ asked for more clarification. However because of Confucian heritage students did not continuously criticize
peer’s opinions after explanation and students did not want to be considered impolite in public. Openness of online
fora based on text-based communication might discourage them from making controversial comments. This result
might be related to the cultural norms of niceness in Asian countries considering Chai and Khine’s study (2006).
Students often appreciated peer’s responses and asked for peer’s feedbacks considering selective response. It implied
how students thought response in online interaction as the following quotes indicated.
Thank you for your response! I thought that my posting might be seemed aggressive if you focused
only on the title. I wanted to facilitate discussion. Don’t feel sorry for me because this is exchanging
of thoughts. I think that you responded to me without any bad feeling as I presented my opinion to
peer without bad intention. I hope to share good opinions in the future.
First of all, I appreciate your reading and response. I want to explain what I wrote before. We learned
several physical traits regarding trait theory according to the second week lecture note. I could
misunderstand them. Please confirm and respond!
In general, I didn’t critically comment on members’ ideas. If somebody criticized each others’
opinions, he or she would look like a show-off or argumentative person.
High portion of metacognitive interaction and higher phase of knowledge construction
Cognitive interaction covered 54.9 % of the total interaction related to the interaction function and showed online
interaction was task-focused (Chai & Khine, 2006). Social and organizational interaction each covered 6.3% and
3.5% of the total interaction. Metacognitive interaction covered 35.3% of total interaction and high percentage of
metacognitive interaction might be related to the nature of the discussion question. Discussion question required the
selection and was confrontational as well. Students discussed which leadership theory is more effective between trait
theory (Are leaders born?) and situational theory (Are leaders made?) considering their experiences, characters, and
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