The relationship between student interaction and message readability in asynchronous online discussions

  • Authors:

  • Jim Hewitt;Vanessa Peters

  • Affiliations:

  • OISE University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;OISE University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

  • Venue:
  • CSCL'07 Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The current study explores the relationship between the readability of computer conferencing messages and the level of student interaction in asynchronous online discussions. Large-scale quantitative analyses were performed on the activity logs of 37 graduate-level distance education courses at the University of Toronto. The mean Reading Ease and Grade Level scores of student messages were found to be significantly correlated with the mean number of messages that students write, the percentage of student messages that reply to other messages, and mean message size. A correlation was also found between the readability of instructor messages and student messages. Consequently, the data suggest that a positive relationship exists between readability and the level of student online interactivity. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.