1. Hitting Reply: A Qualitative Study to
Understand Student Decisions to
Respond to Online Discussion
Postings
Diane D. Chapman
Julia Storberg-Walker
Sophia J. Stone

2. Online Community
• A strong learning community helps
students feel connected, offers a sense of
belonging with shared goals, and helps
students experience a higher quality
learning experience

3. Discussion Builds Community
• Social presence—high immediacy
behaviors facilitated by communication:
– Interpersonality-relationship building
– Impersonality-task oriented
• Collaboration—requires strong sense of
social presence

4. Background
• Research focuses more on learning
strategies to facilitate online discussion
• Understanding what prompts students to
reply to, or engage with other students in
online discussion can help us move
beyond interaction to collaborative
learning environments

5. Purpose and Research Question
• The purpose of this study was to
understand the decision-making
processes of students responding to
discussion posts
• What is/are the decision making
process(es) students use to reply to an
asynchronous discussion posting?

6. Survey Questions
1. Describe a situation when you felt
compelled to respond to a posting and
why?
2. Describe a situation when you did not feel
compelled to respond to a posting and
why?

7. Methodology
• Research participants: 21 students from
two online master’s degree courses were
contacted for voluntary participation
• Data collected from two courses over two
successive years
• Geographic area: Egypt to Delaware
• Structured questions via survey instrument

8. Limitations
• Study focused only on rational decision
making experience
• Interpreter neutrality
• Geographic dispersion of participants
• Survey instrument format

9. Findings: Compelling Students
to Reply
Four themes emerged from the data:
- Group process criteria
- Leadership criteria
- Social criteria
- Judgment criteria

10. Group Process Criteria
Students responded to posts that:
-Facilitated group process work by
providing information, opinions, or
requests for data
-Dealt with specific task at hand

11. Leadership Criteria
Students responded to posts that:
-Allowed student to provide direction
-Set boundaries/guidelines for the group
-Called on one’s role: (facilitator, motivator)

12. Social Criteria
Students responded to posts that:
-Promoted group inclusion
-Requested feedback
-Required interpersonality (responding to
affective or emotional needs)

13. Judgment Criteria
Students responded to posts that:
-Called for correction or constructive
criticism
-Required the need to defend one’s own
work to preserve creative integrity

14. Findings: Compelling Students to
Not Reply
Four themes emerged from the data:
• Applicability criteria
• Judgment criteria
• Leadership criteria
• Social criteria

15. Applicability Criteria
Students did not respond to posts that:
- Were directed to others or were not
applicable to their own work
-Contained on-going conversations
between others (process applicability)

16. Judgment Criteria
Students did not respond to posts that:
-Could not add beneficial/substantive information
-Asked for duplicate information
-Were “chatter” or “nuisance” or “semi-useless”
postings
-Lacked merit or value as these were judged in
pejorative ways

17. Leadership Criteria
Students did not respond to posts that:
– Were already on track and group process was
running smoothly
– Did not require a “catalyst” to move the posts
forward
– Required input from the designated group
leader

18. Social/Personal Feelings Criteria
Students did not respond to posts that:
-Were only social or personal in nature
-Devalued one’s contributions
-Generated negative feelings of exclusion

19. In Summary
• Social presence is closely linked to
decision processes to reply or not to reply
• Students may decide to post or not to post
from either social dimension--
(impersonal/interpersonal)
• Decisions to reply based on
emotional/subjective criteria
• Collaborative interactions affected by both
dimensions

20. In Summary
• Supporting and facilitating peer to peer
interaction in the online environment does not
guarantee collaboration
• Instructional tools provided in the online
environment do not guarantee students will
respond to each other’s postings
• Online collaborative projects do not guarantee
that groups will grow in cohesiveness
• This carries implications for developing
collaborative online structures