Revisiting Social Construction of Knowledge in Asynchronous Computer Mediated Communications (CMC): What to Change

Year 2020, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 67 - 87, 31.01.2020

Çiğdem Suzan Çardak

https://doi.org/10.34056/aujef.673693

Abstract

This study focuses on
social construction of knowledge in asynchronous online forum discussions. Social
construction of knowledge and how to analyze the quality of interaction during
computer mediated communications (CMC) were studied for decades. Interaction
Analysis Model (IAM) is one of the mostly used models for determining the
quality of CMC. The author also used IAM while analyzing the content of CMC activities
in the past. In this study, the same analysis of CMC was conducted again with
different participants and discussion topics in order to see what changes in
the current study if the voluntary/mandatory participation to discussions, prior
interpersonal familiarity, moderating behavior during the CMC, and discussion
technique change, comparing to previous study of the author. The aim of this
paper is to identify the levels of social construction of knowledge in CMC of
the postgraduate students of a university in Turkey. The data of this case
study is composed of CMC messages and views of the participants written on an
anonymous open-ended questionnaire. Quantitative content analysis and thematic
analysis were conducted on the data set. The analysis of the messages by IAM of
this case study gave slightly better results than the previous study of the
author, and some suggestions were put forward for the future research.

Keywords

Social construction of knowledge, computer mediated communications (CMC), online discussions, interaction analysis model (IAM)

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