The sequential analysis of group interaction and critical thinking in online threaded discussions

The purpose of this study was to examine group interaction and crit-ical thinking in online threaded discussions. The Discussion Analy-sis Tool (DAT) was used to identify patterns in interactions and de-termine which interactions promoted critical thinking. With DAT, discussion transcripts were coded across twelve critical thinking events, and transitional probabilities between events were computed using the method of sequential analysis (Bakeman and Quera 1995). By computing the transitional probabilities, DAT generated useful quantitative descriptions of interaction patterns and critical thinking events that followed. The findings show that interactions involving conflicting viewpoints promoted more discussion and critical think-ing, and that evaluation of arguments was more likely to occur as conclusions were being drawn—not as arguments were being pre-sented. Tools such as DAT will be useful for empirically testing in-teractions and structures that enhance online discussions, providing the basis for more systematic testing of instructional interventions and computer-conferencing technologies. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is widely used to support group discussions in distance learning (Harasim 1993; Berge 1997) by ap-plying the principles of constructivism (Muilenburg and Berge 2000), which focus on social interaction and the learning process (Driscoll 2000). Despite its popularity as an instructional tool, few theories and little empir-ical research account for the effects of CMC and instructional strategies on student interaction and learning processes in online discussions (Collin