Effects of Falicitation on Critical Thinking of Adult ESL Learners Engaged in Solving ILL-Structured Problems Through Asynchronous Online Forums

This quasi-experimental study examined the effects of using questions as facilitation to guide student exploration of ill-structured problems in asynchronous online forums on the critical thinking of adult ESL learners in a blended learning environment. A mixed methods approach was used to collect and analyse the data. In this pretest posttest control group format, twenty groups were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups where students worked on three different ill-structured problems consecutively. Only students in the experimental groups received facilitation as they worked through the problems. Data were collected using the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (CCTT Level X) and the online forum transcripts. The statistical analysis showed that students significantly improved from the pretest to posttest after treatment (p