The study introduces an alternative analytic framework for the investigation of online discussion forums. It focuses on the social dynamics occurring in online discussion threads situated within a tertiary e-learning context, and advocated by social learning theories. Online discussion forums are perceived as conducive environments for the evolvement and support of collaborative and socio- constructivist learning. However, the literature reviewed, revealed a growing need for finding empiric frameworks for ascertaining the materialisation of these perceptions. Attempting to address the identified need, the study adopts ethnomethodological notions, complemented by Structural Analysis approach, to produce an alternative analytic frame called the Event Centre (EC) approach for the study of online discussion forums. The theoretical framework chosen in this study enables the investigation of online discussion forums as systems of relations rather than aggregations of individuals. The EC approach enables the visual representation of networks of people interacting with each other and at the same time presenting the content discussed in each interaction. Applying the EC approach to a set of 131online discussion threads, enabled the discovery of social dynamics occurring within the discussion threads. Preliminary investigations of these visually represented dynamics revealed two overarching patterns. One depicting uni directional interactions in which all participants referred to a single message and a second one depicting sequences of interactions organised in chain like patterns. The study suggests that these overarching patterns may imply different perceptions of knowledge as enacted by the participants, and hence possibly reveal different perceptions of teaching and learning through which it may be possible to detect collaborative and social constructivist processes. The study suggests that the visual patterns introduced should be perceived as abstractions of particular events, implying their generalisability and hence possible application to different data sets.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the field of learning management system (LMS) development in tertiary educational institutions, particularly to advance the adoption of learning management systems (LMSes) by exploring the incorporation of sociallymotivated discussion forum models. This study proposes a Web-based application, which includes four different discussion forum models for LMSes, in order to test usability and student preferences. The purpose of this study was to compare two non-social discussion forums and two social discussion forums, to determine their appropriateness in terms of attributes or features and general functionality for LMSes. The design processes led to the creation of a Web-based application called 4DFs, which includes four different discussion forum models. Two of these models are non-social discussion forums: the chat room unstructured model and the traditional general threaded discussion. The other two types are social discussion forums, where users can choose who they converse with: the Twitter-style short comment feed and the Facebook-style. The chat room and the traditional general threaded discussion forums' features are based on those of Sakai, since the research sample was comprised of students from the University of Cape Town (UCT). The Twitter-style and Facebook-style elements, such as retweets, hashtags, likes and reposts, are based on Twitter and Facebook. A pilot study was conducted to discover any errors or issues with the experimental procedure. A controlled experiment was then conducted with 31 students from the institution. Participants had to fill out a background information survey to gather some demographic information and to understand more about participants' previous experiences using chat rooms, discussion forums, and social media applications for university related purposes and for non-university related purposes. Following that, participants were given tasks to test all the features of the different discussion forum models. To avoid bias in the participants' choosing of discussion forum models, the research was conducted with a Counterbalanced Measures Design. Participants had to fill in the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire in conjunction with their use of the Web-based application. Then, after using all discussion forums, they had to fill out a preferences questionnaire that asked about their preferences of the discussion forums and the features. The Twitter-style short comment feed model was preferred in terms of the ease of use and since participants were familiar with this forum. This was followed by the chat room unstructured model and the traditional general threaded discussion in terms of these forums' ease of use and students' preference for the layout. The Facebook-style was less preferable. Also, participants indicated that the post button, reply button, edit, delete, and search button were more beneficial features. Participants mention that the layout of the chat room unstructured model was not optimal, since the massive amount of text made it confusing and unclear to decipher. Participants suggested that including the uploading of media, allowing private chat, adding extra features for important posts, and using a repost button in the discussion forums would be more useful. The study found that students preferred that the learning forum include certain characteristics; they prioritised ease of use, less complexity, less interaction and a user-friendly interface over their familiarity with the forum. For learning, there is a need to use the features for a specific purpose so users do not necessarily want extra fancy features (like emojis), instead they want systems that help them to learn efficiently.

Interaction involves people communicating and reacting to each other. This process is key to the study of discourse, but it is not easy to study systematically how interaction takes place in a specific communicative event, or how it is typically performed over a series of repeated communicative events. However, with a written record of the interaction, it becomes possible to study the process in some detail. This thesis investigates interaction through asynchronous written discussion forums in a computer-mediated learning environment. In particular, this study investigates pragmatic aspects of the communicative event which the asynchronous online discussions comprise. The first case study examines response patterns to messages by looking at the content of initial messages and responses, in order to determine the extent to which characteristics of the messages themselves or other situational factors affect the interaction. The second study examines in what ways participants use a range of discourse devices, including formulaic politeness, humour and supportive feedback as community building strategies in the interaction. The third study investigates the role of the subject line of messages in the interaction, for example by examining how participants choose different types of subject lines for different types of messages. The fourth study examines to what extent features serving a deictic function are drawn on in the interaction and then compares the findings to both oral conversation and formal academic discourse. The overall findings show a complex communicative situation shaped by the medium itself, type of activity, the academic discipline and topic of discussion and by the social and cultural aspects of tertiary education in an online learning environment. In addition, the findings may also provide evidence of learning. / The four case studies presented in Language and interaction in online asynchronous communication in university level English courses investigate written discussion forum interaction in a computer-mediated learning environment. These studies deal with different, yet related, aspects of discussion forum communication. Aspects included are the labeling and response patterns of messages, community-building strategies among participants and features of informal conversation and formal academic writing in the messages. Building on discourse analysis combined with content analysis and corpus method, the work systematically examines the linguistic patterns of communication in the discussion forums. The findings show that there are multiple factors at work simultaneously that affect the linguistic choices by the discourse participants. The constraints and opportunities of the communication are not only connected to the fact that it is computer-mediated, but also to the fact that it is written and in a particular academic environment. Knowledge of the choices available and of what factors potentially affect them is useful for anybody involved in research on net-based teaching and learning.

Interaction involves people communicating and reacting to each other. This process is key to the study of discourse, but it is not easy to study systematically how interaction takes place in a specific communicative event, or how it is typically performed over a series of repeated communicative events. However, with a written record of the interaction, it becomes possible to study the process in some detail. This thesis investigates interaction through asynchronous written discussion forums in a computer-mediated learning environment. In particular, this study investigates pragmatic aspects of the communicative event which the asynchronous online discussions comprise. The first case study examines response patterns to messages by looking at the content of initial messages and responses, in order to determine the extent to which characteristics of the messages themselves or other situational factors affect the interaction. The second study examines in what ways participants use a range of discourse devices, including formulaic politeness, humour and supportive feedback as community building strategies in the interaction. The third study investigates the role of the subject line of messages in the interaction, for example by examining how participants choose different types of subject lines for different types of messages. The fourth study examines to what extent features serving a deictic function are drawn on in the interaction and then compares the findings to both oral conversation and formal academic discourse. The overall findings show a complex communicative situation shaped by the medium itself, type of activity, the academic discipline and topic of discussion and by the social and cultural aspects of tertiary education in an online learning environment. In addition, the findings may also provide evidence of learning.

This study is a research of the frequency of acronyms in an online forum and the meaning of the most frequent ones in their context. In the study, definitions are given for language forms used online so that one is able to compare a set of similarities and differences between these online varieties and the Standard English. The method consists of identifying and searching for a set of CMD-typical acronyms. These acronyms are taken from prior studies as well as from Crystal’s (2006:91f) list of known CMD-acronyms. The material is retrieved from an online forum of asynchronous communication, and the results show the frequency of the acronyms as well as discuss their meanings in context. The results indicate that acronyms are highly infrequent in asynchronous environments, and their use decreases from 2010 to 2013. The conclusion of this study is that the infrequency of acronyms in asynchronous environments may be due to the nature of asynchronous online communication, in which users have time to write their replies. When comparing this study’s corpora with studies on frequencies in synchronous environments, the acronym frequency in this study was lower than the frequency shown in the synchronous studies.

This qualitative interpretive research study of students participating in online discussion forums explores how the socio-constructivist nature of online discussion forums fosters the development of historical thinking. The study also focuses attention on the development of the historical understandings of students as they participant in online discussion forums in particular significance, empathy and agency. Set within the context of discussion forums and framed by socio-constructivism and historical thinking, the study uncovered what it means for students to “do history” and how students construct their own historical narratives as they interact with their peers online. Data collection included transcripts of online discussion forums, interviews with participants and the collection of other related artifacts. Findings suggest that the online discussion forums facilitate socio-constructivism in the classroom by providing students with extended opportunities to engage with their peers ideas and assumptions. Additionally, the findings also conclude that students understanding of significance, empathy and agency are related to their interactions with both the official and unofficial curriculums and the temporal and physical proximity of examples to students lived experiences. / text

An electronic advice network provides employees opportunities to tap diverse experts within the organization at an unprecedented speed and scale. It is formed when an advice seeker initiates an online discussion thread joined by members of various communities, each specializing in a specific domain. This dissertation recognizes the substantial gap in our understanding of how to best harness the performance potential of expertise diversity provided through an electronic advice network within a firm. It thus investigates the process by and conditions under which expertise diversity in an electronic advice network promotes the advice seeker’s learning and performance. A field study was conducted via multi-methods including observation, interviews, and survey at a global company running discussion forums spanning internal virtual communities. The unit of analysis was at the discussion thread level. 190 discussion threads comprising 1,200 participants and associated outcomes (rated by their respective advice seekers) were analyzed. Findings suggest that, for the seeker to realize the performance potential of diverse inputs, discussion participants should facilitate the seeker’s learning by engaging in collective elaboration—articulating the differences and relevance of their diverse inputs. The seeker learned and performed the least when discussion participants were highly diverse but did not engage in collective elaboration. Discussion participants engaged in collective elaboration to the extent that they had previously established shared syntactic and semantic understanding of each other’s expertise domains through participation in each other’s communities. This dissertation contributes to the virtual communities literature by unearthing the relationships between expertise diversity and the advice seeker’s learning and performance and explaining when and how the seeker benefits from the diverse knowledge shared through an electronic advice network. The moderating role of collective elaboration explains why prior research may have found no or even a negative relationship between expertise diversity and discussion outcomes. It also contributes to the team literature by offering boundary conditions for the previous findings on expertise diversity and common ground. The collective elaboration construct can be also adopted by team diversity researchers to better understand where a disruption in the chain of group-level information processing may occur in some diverse teams. / text

Knowledge is the critical success factor for organizations to compete in the contemporary business world. Organizations that can make full use of their collective expertise and knowledge are likely to be more innovative, efficient and effective in the marketplace. With the development of advanced information and communication technology, organizations are undertaking various knowledge management initiatives to augment traditional ways of knowledge transfer. This dissertation intended to understand how various factors influence knowledge workers' knowledge sourcing behavior in the multimodal knowledge network. More specifically, our research question is: How do task characteristics, knowledge characteristics and individual characteristics influence knowledge workers' channel preferences during their knowledge sourcing activities?We built a knowledge sourcing preference model which predicts knowledge workers' preferences among various knowledge channels. We identified eight important antecedents from a wide spectrum of task characteristics, knowledge characteristics, and individual characteristics. We also identified three representative knowledge sourcing channels: face-to-face communication with colleagues, knowledge repositories, and discussion forums. We developed eight hypotheses on how each of the antecedent influence channel preferences.We tested our hypotheses through a survey we conducted in an international information technology company. Out of the eight hypotheses, the hypotheses on the influences from knowledge codifiability, knowledge volatility, extroversion/introversion dimension of the personality, and reciprocation wariness are supported. The hypotheses on the influences from task interdependency and task urgency are partially supported. The hypotheses on the influences from task routineness and expertise are not supported.This study furthers our understanding of knowledge workers' knowledge sourcing behavior in a multimodal knowledge network. The results of this study help organizations understand the advantages and disadvantages of various sourcing channels under certain circumstance of tasks, knowledge, and individuals. With this understanding, organizations will be able to have reasonable expectations on the utilization of knowledge transfer approaches, and to improve the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer initiatives. This will enable the organizations to cultivate environments or design systems to develop the types of channels to accommodate the preferences of knowledge workers with various combinations of tasks, knowledge and individual characteristics.

The growth and the specificities of the Distance Education in Brazil have promoted a number of respects, mainly with regards to the capabilities of the team who elaborate and develop the courses. In this sense the presence of the tutor, despite being questioned, is stated as required. Moreover, studies about his/her participation in the teaching-learning process aim at examining his/her role in monitoring the student, which have as a principle the interactions that his/her performs in AVA. The goal of this research paper is to analyze how the interactions between tutors and students in discussion forums within a Virtual Learning Environment contribute to the cognitive development of the student, based on the findings by Aretio (1999, 2001), Dillenbourg (1999), Costa, Paraguaçu e Pinto (2009), Gallimore e Tharp (1996), Gonzales (2005), Gros e Silva (2006), Primo (1998, 2000, 2001, 2007) Roscoe e Chi [1999?] e Vygotsky (1981, 1989, 2001 and 2008). Indeed, studies about the interactions and their shapes and types, can contribute to the understanding of the tutor functions in Distance Education. The methodology used for performing this online qualitative research has been the case study, involving two data sources: reading, analysis and categorization of tutor s records in discussion forums in chosen disciplines and direct observation of the interactions of tutors in discussion forums available on Moodle environment at UFAL. The search also was developed from bibliographic data surveying and webgráficos, data collection, data analysis and tabulation. The findings suggest that the tutors make use of several types of interaction, not all off then a possible process. However, some studies point to a mutual interaction and collaborative as the most suitable for the tutor in teaching-learning process to follow up students and leading them to participate more effectively. / O crescimento e as especificidades da EAD no Brasil têm promovido uma série de singularidades, sobre a formação da equipe que elabora e desenvolve os cursos. A presença do tutor, apesar de ser questionada por vários estudiosos da área, apresenta-se como necessária para o desenvolvimento dos cursos, e os estudos sobre a sua participação no processo de ensino-aprendizagem visam a analisar suas funções em acompanhamento ao aluno e têm como princípio as interações que realiza no Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem. Esta pesquisa analisa como as interações entre o tutor e os alunos nos fóruns de discussão, realizados em um AVA, contribuem de forma significativa para o desenvolvimento cognitivo do aluno, e está fundamentada em Aretio (1999 e 2001), Dillenbourg (1999), Costa, Paraguaçu e Pinto (2009), Gallimore e Tharp (1996), Gonzales (2005), Gros e Silva (2006), Primo (1998, 2000, 2001 e 2007), Roscoe e Chi (1999), Papert (1994) e Salmon (2000) e Vygotsky (1981, 1989, 2001 e 2008). Os estudos acerca das interações, de suas formas e tipos podem não só contribuir para o entendimento das funções do tutor na EAD mas também da própria modalidade de ensino, em franca expansão. A metodologia utilizada para a realização desta pesquisa qualitativa on-line foi o estudo de caso, e envolveu duas fontes de dados: leitura com análise e categorização dos registros dos tutores nos fóruns de discussão nas disciplinas escolhidas e observação direta das interações dos tutores nos fóruns de discussão presentes no Moodle Ufal. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida a partir de levantamento de dados bibliográficos e webgráficos, coleta de dados, tabulação e análise dos dados. Os resultados encontrados apontam que os tutores usam vários tipos de interação, nem todos favoráveis para o processo; aponta também para uma interação mútua e colaborativa como as mais indicadas para a atuação do tutor no processo ensino-aprendizagem, acompanhando os alunos e conduzindo-os a uma participação mais efetiva.

abstract: Online discussion forums have become an integral part of education and are large repositories of valuable information. They facilitate exploratory learning by allowing users to review and respond to the work of others and approach learning in diverse ways. This research investigates the different comment semantic features and the effect they have on the quality of a post in a large-scale discussion forum. We survey the relevant literature and employ the key content quality identification features. We then construct comment semantics features and build several regression models to explore the value of comment semantics dynamics. The results reconfirm the usefulness of several essential quality predictors, including time, reputation, length, and editorship. We also found that comment semantics are valuable to shape the answer quality. Specifically, the diversity of comments significantly contributes to the answer quality. In addition, when searching for good quality answers, it is important to look for global semantics dynamics (diversity), rather than observe local differences (disputable content). Finally, the presence of comments shepherd the community to revise the posts by attracting attentions to the posts and eventually facilitate the editing process. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2016