Questioning and the quality of knowledge ideas in a CSCL context: A study on two age-groups of students

Conference Theme: Connecting Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning to Policy and PracticeThis paper aims to study the relationship between the type of questions posted and the quality of knowledge ideas expressed in a CSCL context. Previous studies suggest that this relationship may be different for different age-groups. This study was conducted with two classes of students-at grades 6 and 10 respectively. The discourse was analyzed at both thread- and individual-student- levels. It was found that for the sixth-grade students, those who asked better questions also expressed better knowledge ideas. For the tenth-grade students, such a relationship at the individual-student-level was not found. Nonetheless, at the thread-level, there is a positive correlation between the presence of better questions and more developed knowledge ideas in the tenth-grade students' online discourse, but not in the sixthgrade students'. The results suggest further discourse characteristics in addition to questioning to be related to the quality of knowledge ideas expressed. © ISLS.link_to_subscribed_fulltex