The biggest categories are collaborative processes of 'joint knowledge building' and 'acknowledging/replying/referring to another message'. The messages in the co-ordination category are not included in this analysis. One interesting aspect of this analysis is the presence of personal and motivational references in so many of the messages, indicating participants' willingness in sharing their personal situations and motivational commitment to the task.
The student contribution examples below indicate that students demonstrated an enhanced understanding of the features of media reporting rather than an enhanced appreciation of the science being studied. The quotes reproduced below indicate how students brought their experiences and knowledge to the discussion and collaborated with fellow students to jointly answer questions posed at the beginning of the day. We also marked these contributions as examples of the above categories to show how the content analysis was carried out. Three examples of a student message indicating the categories to which it was assigned are presented below: