| High school online learning is flourishing. One of its most promising applications, asynchronous online discussion, has great potential for supporting knowledge construction, but there is virtually no academic study to support its effectiveness at the high school level. This paper describes a research project that fills that gap by studying online discussions in different subject areas at three schools.; Rooted in an extensive review of the post-secondary literature and the few articles written about high school interaction, this paper describes a framework that summarizes the important characteristics of online discussion: time flexibility, unlimited space, the physical separation/isolation of students, a public and permanent record, an electronic format and text-based interaction. This paper also describes a framework that represents social and cognitive aspects of knowledge construction, as they are represented in the literature. It then explains how these frameworks were used to investigate how online discussion supports and inhibits learning.; By surveying almost all of the students in each of the three classes, by extensively interviewing 20 of those students, and by analyzing their discussion transcripts, this study generated informative data about how online discussion impacts on knowledge construction. This data was carefully organized and then used to update earlier frameworks that described online discussion and knowledge construction. These frameworks were then used to tease out connections between the medium and learning and to uncover ways in which knowledge construction is supported and inhibited by online discussion.; This study ultimately finds that online discussion strongly supports knowledge construction, but that there are a number of negative impacts that must be taken into consideration. An "Ideal Online Discussion", based on these findings, is described, and a number of suggestions for future research are made.; In a field that is growing rapidly, there is a need for thorough and trustworthy research to support the use of its innovative pedagogy. This study meets that need by generating data and conclusions about a variety of high school students' experience of knowledge construction in asynchronous online discussion, and suggesting ways that future research can extend what is found here. |
