Methodology
Collaborative Processes
In the first part of our analyses we explored collaborative actions taking place in the one-day online seminar dealing with portrayal of science in media. We performed a content analysis of all the contributions in the online seminar. We employed a classification system developed in our earlier work (Jones, Scanlon and Blake, 2000; Blake and Scanlon, 2012) and validated and extended it using the rating scheme by Meier et al for assessing the quality of computer supported collaboration processes (see Meier et al 2007 and Rummel et al 2011). In these analyses we took the whole message as the unit of analysis as suggested by Rourke et al (2001) as it combines the flexibility of the thematic unit with the reliable identification of attributes of a syntactical unit. The categories of collaborative processes used in the present study are as follows:
Joint knowledge building: presenting and defending a position by giving one or more rationale or justifying the opinion by explaining it (comparable to Meier's communication/sustaining mutual understanding category)
Asking questions or dialogue extension prompts: asking questions, sometimes not actually to get an answer but to prompt fellow students to think/contribute on a certain subject (comparable to Meier's
communication/sustaining mutual understanding category)
Supporting the argument with a reference and or an example: giving an example or providing a reference to clarify the topic under discussion (comparable to Meier's communication/sustaining mutual understanding category)
Acknowledging/replying/ referring to another message: referring to/extending on ideas in a fellow students contribution (reciprocal/cooperative orientation in Meier's classification; 'interpersonal relationship' category in Meier's extended rating scheme)
Motivation and commitment: contributions referring to participants' individual motivation and commitment to the task (taken from Meier's extended rating scheme; not used by us in earlier work).
Instructions/information: contributions that are related to running of the collaborative activity ('coordination' category in Meier's extended rating scheme)