Online discussions tend to be more effective when they are purposefully structured. In this article, we describe how the design of a photo-based protocol influenced community interactions within an online discussion in an undergraduate course. Students were asked to take and share a photo related to a course concept, respond to a peer's photo, and…

The central goal of our exploratory study was to investigate differences in college chemistry students' interactions during lab experiments with different levels of inquiry. This analysis was approached from three major analytic dimensions: (i) functional analysis; (ii) cognitive processing; and (iii) social processing. According to our results,…

Research has revealed that students in online classes may have higher rates of attrition than those in traditional face-to-face classes. Effective teaching and learning in an online environment requires different pedagogical skills than those used in traditional face-to-face classes. Online courses must focus on the quality of interaction. As an…

Various formats of online discussion have proven valuable for enhancing learning and collaboration in distance and blended learning contexts. However, despite their capacity to reveal essential processes in collaborative inquiry, current mainstream analytical frameworks, such as the cognitive presence framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer,…