Computer-supported collaborative environments allow for active participation and reflective discussions, but do not cause them. Due to the asynchronous nature of mediating technologies, students who use CMC have time to reflect on their ideas. The asynchronous writing involved in CMC therefore tends to be longer and more carefully structured than synchronous writing (i.e., chat). Even so, asynchronous writing is mainly based on short threads of discussion. An analysis reveals that asking for a lot of information at the early stages of networking tends to stimulate contributions and responses.

The content analyses of networked discussions have indicated various modes of discourse: e.g., social-oriented, fact-oriented, and explanation-oriented. Fact-oriented discourse is found to dominate whereas explanation-oriented discourse and high-level elaborations are hard to achieve through CMC. Another important portion of computer-mediated communication is regulative and affective statements, and coordination of interaction. The results show that the students are able to disclose their emotions and feelings more freely when the teacher takes no part in the discussion.


2) How does the asynchronous nature of networked discussions affect the instructor's role?

Students’ participation and interaction does not just happen; it must be intentionally designed into the instruction. There are several aspects that instructors should consider in order to facilitate networked discussions. The most important starting point is the purpose of the use of the communication tools. CMC is not primarily a transfer of information. Therefore, in networked discussions, it is a challenge to find ways to encourage collaborative learning and social construction of knowledge, for example: questioning, elaboration, explaining, and evaluating. The teacher's guidance is needed to expand progressive and explanation-oriented discourse.

The instructor’s behavior includes both management-related and content-related activities. From the management point of view, it is important to facilitate conceptually challenging study projects and tasks that focus on gaining theoretical understanding of the problems being investigated. Particularly, a collaborative goal structure is found to promote students’ interaction. In addition, course structure and class size are perceived factors influencing levels of interaction. Small groups using asynchronous communication have demonstrated task-directed behaviour in problem solving.

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