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15 5 5 2 116 5 5 1 -17 5 4 1 -18 4 1 6 119 4 3 220 4 4 1 -21 4 4 1 -22 3 3 3 -23 3 3 3 -24 3 1 3 125 3 3 2 -26 3 3 2 -27 3 2 2 -28 3 3 1 -29 3 3 - -30 2 1 2 231 2 - 2 1Average 6 5 4 2Table 1: Course participationOf the 31 participants, Table 1 shows that they undertook an average of six ofthe ten topics either through the LOs, the discussion forum or in many casesboth. For compulsory assessed courses students in this institution were expectedto attend 80 per cent of classes, so an average of 60 per cent for an optionalindependent learning course is quite a high participation rate. There was a lotof variation within this though, with six of the students contributing to all thetopics and ten of the students contributing to three or less of the topics. All of thestudents, except one, undertook at least one of the LOs, and all of the students,except two, contributed to the discussion forums. Again there was variation withsome students preferring to undertake the independent LOs and others preferringthe discussion forum. Only nine of the students contributed to the chat sessions.The low rate of participation for the chat sessions is not surprising as they wereoffered as an optional activity which was not integral to the course. Many of thestudents explained in the interviews that the times of the chat sessions had notbeen convenient for them. Similarly many of the students who made minimalcontributions to the course reported in the interviews that they had not hadenough time during the semester to adequately participate in the course. Althougha case might be made for removing those students with minimal participationin the course from the research, it was felt that it was important to gain theimpressions and opinions of those students to investigate why they had notparticipated.280 | Intercultural Awareness Thailand