Students Use of Strategy to Create Effective Discussions in an Online Graduate-Level Discussion Forum

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The study investigated the types and frequencies of strategies for creating social presence used by native and non-native English-speaking students during online discussions while enrolled in a US graduate course. The study also examined how their uses of social presence developed over time during the discussions. Data came from the online discussion transcripts from the electronic bulletin board posted by the participants over the course of a semester. A total of 149 messages posted on the board were analyzed using the social presence category designed by Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, and Archer (2001). The findings showed that the participants made conscious and deliberate efforts to make their online interaction more effective by employing various types of social presence strategies. The strategies employed by the participants in order to create social presence varied from the affective to the cohesive. In the affective category, self-disclosure proved to be effective in developing a sense of community among the students and helpful in reducing their feelings of isolation. Use of humor was used the least frequently. In the interactive and the cohesive categories, asking questions and vocatives were most frequently used, respectively.