Chatting to Learn: The Changing Psychology and Evolving Pedagogy ...

To analyze these data, I developed a coding scheme that examined how many perspectives each group used and how much evidence supported these perspectives. Using a procedure described in Chapter 4, I converted these codes into “grades” for each discussion, which could be compared with one another. Results indicate that discussions in the classroom and online both achieved similar quality scores. From group to group and day to day, however, there was a significant amount of variation. Results also indicate that efficiency was significantly reduced online; it took nearly twice as long for online students to achieve the same discussion quality as face-to-face students. This is described in more detail in Chapter 4.

1.3 Looking Forward

In Chapter 2, I present an overview of the relevant literature, divided into two parts. First, I describe research that has examined chat as a medium. Linguistic analysis, for example, shows that chat-based conversations contain some aspects of written language and some aspects of spoken language; they exist somewhere in between, as a separate and unique medium. Psychological research shows that these factors—which make chat environments unique—also lead to unexpected social behaviors, such as more equitable participation patterns.