Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Teachers College Educational ...

Investigating Potential Factors to Increase Levels of Participation in
Class Discussion
Apichai Chaiwinij,
Teachers College, Columbia University, 549 W 123 Street, APT 12E, New York, NY 10027,
Email: ac3344@tc.columbia.edu
Abstract: While collaborative learning is globally employed, many studies point out that a
majority of Asian students cannot adapt themselves to collaborative learning
environments and tend to be quiet in class discussion. This study aims to investigate
three potential factors (online discussion, anonymity, and online role-play) that may
contribute to a discussion environment and the level of students’ participation. In this
study, there were 32 subjects in total, consisting of four groups of eight subjects. They
discussed six topics under six different discussion conditions, which were the
combination of three factors. The result confirmed that three factors can be employed to
provide a discussion environment that promotes an increased level of participation
among Asian students. In addition, type of roles like school leaders and country
administrators did motivate the participants to seriously engage in role-playing and
generate more critical and problem solving ideas.
Teamwork and collaboration are among of the most important 21 st century learning skills (Schrier, 2006).
Many educators have searched for ways to creatively integrate these 21 st century skills into K-12
pedagogy with innovative, effective, and appropriate activities (Schrier, 2006). One of the popular
methods is to provide a collaborative learning environment in the school setting to instruct modern
students. However, previous research states that a majority of Asian students cannot adapt quickly to
collaborative learning environments (Wong, 2004). In order to assist Asian students, educators need to
provide a suitable discussion environment to encourage them to freely share their ideas with the group.
Thus, the research attempted to investigate the potential factors that should be employed to develop a
suitable discussion environment. Based on previous research, three potential factors are successfully
used to increase levels of participation: (1) online discussion, (2) anonymity, and (3) online role-play.
Online discussion and anonymity enables better performance in terms of quantity of work, generated
(Chester, & Gwynne, 1998; Collins, & Berge, 1995; Hartman, Neuwirth, Kiesler, Cochran, Palmquist, &
Zubrow, 1995; McComb, 1994; Rheingold, 1994; Ruberg, Moore, & Taylor, 1995). Further, online roleplay
improves students’ interpersonal and communication skills (Lloyd, 1998). Although past research has
studied the effects of online discussion, anonymity, and online role-play on level of participation in group
discussion, not many studies have looked at different factors along a continuum with Asian students.
In this study, there were 32 subjects in total, consisting of four groups of eight subjects. The subjects
were asked to discuss six topics under six different conditions, which are the combination of three factors
(online discussion, anonymity and online role-play). Skype IM was used to hold the online discussions.
All chat histories were recorded. Each idea generated in the discussions was coded, compared, and then
analyzed to answer six hypotheses. The interviews after the experiment were conducted in order to elicit
the feedback towards the experiment.
The research findings confirmed that three factors could be employed to provide a suitable discussion
environment to increase levels of participation among Asian students. Online discussion causes
participants to have more interpersonal activities and generate more new ideas in limited time (Bordia,
1997; Ruberg, Moore, & Taylor, 1996). Anonymity unlocks students’ potentials in group discussion in
which students participate in group discussion more when their identities are not revealed. Among two
types of identity: age (seniority) and gender, age (seniority) is more crucial among Asian students as the
junior participants tend to be silent in front of the senior participants (Gao, Ting-Toomey, & Gudykunst,
1996). Online role-play allows students to enthusiastically participate and share critical and problem
solving ideas toward the discussion topics (Doerr-Stevens, 2007; Gee, 2004; Shaffer, 2006). Lastly,
types of roles like school leaders and country administrators do motivate the participants to seriously
engage in role-playing and generate more ideas.
8