Share Paper: Transforming Interaction and Social Presence through Course Design: Authentic Implementation of Threaded Discussion Tools

1. Richard Pierce, Shenandoah University, United States

Abstract: Instructional design factors that promoted authentic uses of threaded discussions as a vehicle to establish social presence, self directed learning and cooperative learning resulted in 900 posts in a semester, when no posts were required. Authentic uses of the threaded discussion tool provided an important dimension to the socially constructed knowledge for students with lower ICT self efficacy in an online class.