| In today's networked environment, online forums emerge as a popular form of social structures that have greater opportunities for learning in various organizational contexts. A plethora of studies have investigated the phenomenon to identify antecedent of its success, such as individual characteristics and organizational structure. However, how such antecedents get involved in collaborative learning processes and influence their outcomes has been largely understudied. Furthermore, the learning process in online forums has been simply presumed as a kind of general organizational learning, despite its unique situation of learning from strangers. This dissertation study focuses on online forums' highly motivated for problem-based learning and explores a dynamic process of such learning, namely Open Collective Inquiry (OCI). Presuming that dialogue embodies open collective inquiry processes, this study investigated characteristics of OCI dialogues that influence distinct types of inquiry outcomes using a grounded theory method. In particular, the current study highlights what participants do for OCI and how they do it through their dialogue. Based on distinct purposes for dialogic actions, six action domains were identified that constitute OCI processes: action domains to initiate inquiry, to maintain commitment, to guide inquiry process, to frame a problem, to negotiate solutions, and to confirm workability. These action domains were interrelated to shape OCI processes. Varying extent to which participants performed purposes of these action domains was found to influence distinct types of outcomes, such as full closure, partial closure, non-closure, and degraded closure. To derive a more systemic account of how participants of OCI perform such purposes, three dimensions of dialogic action were proposed: action performed, content of action, and argumentative components. These dimensions were used for characterizing essential dialogic actions in each action domain for successful OCI. In this way, three factors are proposed that influence OCI outcomes: fulfillment of essential dialogic actions, OCI initiators' role, and inquiry context. Based on these findings, a dialogic action model of OCI in online forums emphasizes OCI initiators' active roles and inquiry context encouraging validation and improvement. These characteristics influence essential dialogic actions of open collective inquiry that perform reflection, experimentation, and validation. Discussing implications for research and practice concludes this dissertation study. |
