The Effects of Epistemic Belief and Discussion-Facilitating Strategy on Interaction and Satisfaction in Online Discussion

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of students' epistemic belief and the instructor's discussion-facilitating strategies on interaction and satisfaction in online discussion. It was predicted that the effects might vary depending on whether epistemic belief, one of the personal characteristics of learners, corresponds to epistemic assumption of online discussion, and whether it was matched to discussion-facilitating strategies. After we conducted an experiment with 43 college students, the results showed that there were group differences in interaction and satisfaction, depending on epistemic belief. Regarding discussion-facilitating strategies, there were meaningful differences in interaction but not in the satisfaction level. In addition, researchers found interactional effects between epistemic belief and discussion-facilitating strategies in social and interactive types of messages. (Contains 6 tables and 2 figures.)