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levels of learning and thinking should manifest within the senior undergraduate
year. Premised on these assumptions, a fourth year university course was selected
for this study; it was an optional bachelor of education course within an outreach
program, cohort-based, and distance delivered using WebCT with an instructor who
was experienced in both distance delivery and the use of asynchronous text-based
Internet conferencing software.
Using the practical inquiry model to guide the course design, the first phase
of the practical inquiry model (the triggering event) was introduced by the course
instructor through the selected pedagogical interventions. The instructional methods
explored varied in degree with respect to structure; though, they were all designed
with explicitly stated learning outcomes, start dates, participation time lines, activ-
ity termination dates, contribution expectations, and group formation. Evaluation
criteria for participation in the learning activities were provided in advance in the
form of a grading rubric. The rubric was designed using the SOLO taxonomy (an
orderly way of describing a hierarchy of complexity by which learners show mas-
tery of academic work) (Biggs, 1999); the rubric was given to the students at the
onset of the course (see Kanuka, 2005 for a full description of the SOLO taxon-
omy for this study). All assignments were set to invite higher levels of cognitive
presence (e.g., extended abstract responses based on the highest level in the SOLO
taxonomy); students were made aware at the beginning of the course that higher
levels of thinking and learning were expected and grades were based on these
criteria.
Quantitative Content Analysis (QCA)
Garrison et al. (2000) suggest a complimentary research technique—
quantitative
content analysis
(QCA), along with their rubric (Table 20.3) for assessing the pro-
cesses and outcomes of online discussion. The technique was originally defined
by Berelson (1954) as the systematic, objective, and quantitative description of the
manifest content of communication. Abstracting the salient steps, Garrison et al.
(2001) describe it as a procedure that involves (1) segmenting conference transcripts
into meaningful units, (2) classifying the units into one of the five phases of practical
inquiry, and (3) summing the frequency of units in each phase.
The message was selected as the unit of analysis (though the matter of unitizing
is unsettled in the distance and higher education literature, see Rourke, Anderson,
Garrison, & Archer 2001, 2000; Fahy et al., 2000). Two graduate students were
hired to segment and classify the content of the conference transcripts. The use of
multiple coders permitted the determination of inter-rater reliability, which reflects
the assumptions of QCA that communication content is manifest (not projective)
and that the data analysis procedure is objective (not interpretive).
A coding scheme with categories based on the practical inquiry model was estab-
lished prior to the data analysis. Representative samples were then gathered from
the WebCT fora; this created a protocol for identifying and categorizing the phases
