Comparison of Results among the Four Threaded Discussion Transcripts . 153

knowledge/experience (O)

Ambiguities (A) 0.970 Linking Ideas (L) 0.833 Justification (J) 0.957 Critical Assessment

(C)

0.818

Practical Utility (P) 0.762

Width of

understanding (W)

0.895

Table 4.18: Critical Thinking Ratio of the SLA 2 Threaded Discussion

that they had been able to integrate their previous experience and background knowledge into the threaded discussion. This is probably because most of the participants were exposed to the second language acquisition theories during their undergraduate study. Therefore, it was easier for them to add in their background knowledge and experience and include other relevant materials they gained from books, articles and internet into both the SLA 1 and SLA 2 threaded discussions. On the other hand, the participants who participated in Research Methodology course threaded discussion sessions did not have enough experience pertaining to the writing literature review and also the conduct of an interview. This is because the research methodology course is an introductory course which is designed to expose the postgraduate students who are novice with regard to the important concepts of research. The importance of being able to locate and insert relevant information, be it taken from the outside materials such as books, personal experience or previous knowledge into the threaded discussion was highlighted by Woo and Wang (2009) in their study. Woo and Wang (2009) conducted a study to find out whether web blogging was effective in encouraging critical thinking. They were also interested in investigating the influence of different kind of blogging topic has on the overall results of the frequency of each critical thinking indicator. Their participants were secondary school students. The three topics of web blogging were designed based on secondary school History subject syllabus. The framework they used to code their web blogging transcripts was similar to the one employed by the current researcher which was known as the Newman et.al (1995) content analysis framework. They designed three topics for students to discuss in total. The similarity found among the three threaded discussions’ findings was that R+

(Relevant statements), O+ (Referring to outside knowledge/experience) and JS+

(Justified statements) indicators were the three most frequent detected critical thinking indicators in all the three web blogging transcripts. They also claimed that because the

topic 1 and topic 3 allowed the students to use the information from the textbooks to substantiate their arguments, the C- (Uncritical acceptance or unreasoned rejection) percentage reported was insignificant as it was too small a value. On the other hand, topic 2 which was designed in such a way that the participants could not rely solely on the textbook information to support their arguments, the overall negative criticalness of topic 2 increased and C-(Uncritical acceptance or unreasoned rejection) indicator percentage became significant.

The same phenomenon is observed in the findings of this present study. In the data of this study, it is noted that while the percentage of O+ (Bringing in outside knowledge/experience to bear on the problem) indicator in both the SLA 1 and SLA 2 threaded discussions are higher than that of the RM 1 and RM 2 threaded discussions, the percentage of C- (Uncritical acceptance or unreasoned rejection) indicator for both the SLA 1 and SLA 2 threaded discussions are lower than that of the RM 1 and RM 2 threaded discussions. These findings again show that being able to include relevant outside materials into the threaded discussion could be a crucial key to improve the participants’ overall critical thinking performance.

With regard to the ratio of O (Referring to outside knowledge/experience) of this study, the O (Referring to outside knowledge/experience) ratio for all four threaded discussion is 1. This resembled the result reported in Song and Chan (2009) study. In their study, their participants were required to participate in four topics of online discussion. In their findings, they stated that O (Referring to outside knowledge/experience) indicator ratio was found to be the highest in all four online discussion transcripts. In addition, the R+

(Relevant statements) and I+ (Important points) indicators were said to be consistently exhibited throughout the four topics of online discussion. This was because it seems that the number of statements coded under R+ (Relevant statements) and I+ (Important points) indicator did not differ greatly throughout the four topics of online discussion.

Song and Chan (2009) also further stated that there was improvement found in the critical thinking ratio of each critical thinking indicator as their participants progressed from topic no.1 to topic no.3. However, when it came to topic no.4 threaded discussion, the critical thinking ratio of each critical thinking indicator dropped and from the comments they gathered from their participants, the researchers attributed the poor performance in topic 4 to ill-structured topic of discussion and time constraint faced by their participants. In terms of time constraint, the researchers pointed out that at the time topic no.4 was set for discussion, it was near the end of semester and at that period of time, their participants had to rush in finishing and submitting the other assignments.

This probably caused them to contribute less quality input in topic no. 4 threaded discussion. This seems to imply that the timing concerning when online discussion task was launched may likely to affect the overall participants’ critical thinking performance in threaded discussion. In this study, after looking at the average of the critical thinking ratio for both the SLA 1 and SLA 2 threaded discussions, when participants from Second Language Acquisition course progressed from the SLA 1 threaded discussion to the SLA 2 threaded discussion, it is noted that there was a slight drop in their overall critical thinking performance. The reason may be similar to the one stated by Song and Chan (2009) in that time constraint became a problem faced by the participants. This is because the SLA 2 threaded discussion task was assigned during the end of the semester.

It was the time where the participants were rushing to meet the deadlines of the other courses’ assignments. This seems to imply that the timing concerning when online discussion task was launched may likely to affect the overall participants’ critical thinking performance in threaded discussion.

For this study, another similarity identified throughout the four topics of threaded discussion transcripts was C+ (Critical assessment of others’ or own contribution) indicator was recognized as one of the least detected indicators in all the four threaded

discussion transcripts. This may suggest that overall participants did not engage much in evaluating their peers’ postings critically. This same phenomenon was also observed and reported by Irfan and Noor Hazita (2010) who examined the trainee teachers’ online discussion forum transcripts with the aim of finding out the positive critical thinking and negative critical thinking indicators that were exhibited. As mentioned by Irfan and Noor Hazita (2010), the subjects of their study were the trainee teachers who were all novice when it came to teaching. In other words, they did not have any teaching experience prior to their teaching practice. The online discussion forum was launched during their teaching practice in order for them to interact with their peers and lecturer by sharing and discussing the problems they encountered during teaching practice. One of their findings was that C+ (Critical assessment of others’ or own contribution) indicator was one of the six least found positive critical thinking indicators, rendering them to assert that their subjects of study might be weak in their ability to evaluate their peers’ and their own postings critically and the researchers posited that this was probably caused by their lack of real life teaching experience.

In short, the outcome of the assessment based on the Newman et.al (1995) content analysis framework which was designed to measure critical thinking is presented and discussed in the section above. The outcome of the assessment includes both the critical thinking performance in terms of the score of each positive and negative critical thinking indicator of each topic of threaded discussion and also the critical thinking ratio of each broad critical thinking category. The following chapter will outline the results and discussions of research question 3.

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION IN RELATION TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE USE OF COHESIVE

DEVICES AND CRITICAL THINKING