An instant perspective comparison system to facilitate learners' discussion effectiveness in an online discussion process

Online discussion allows learners to acquire more knowledge, different perspectives, and more ideas through interaction with others in an online discussion process to promote their cognitive learning and critical thinking abilities. Accordingly, an instant perspective comparison system (IPCS) based on natural language processing, social networks, and data visualization technologies was developed in this study to present the similarity and differences in terms of the multiple perspectives and complexity of both learning peers through visualizing perspective comparison diagram to facilitate the depth and width of learners' thinking in a discussion process for promoting the online discussion effectiveness. With a quasi-experimental design, a total of 49 Grade 11 students from two classes in a senior high school of Taipei City in Taiwan were randomly recruited as the research subjects for the online discussion activity about the socio-scientific issues (SSI) titled "nuclear power generation." A total of 28 students from a class were randomly assigned as the experimental group with an IPCS-assisted online discussion, while a total of 21 students from another class were randomly assigned as the control group with a general online discussion to examine the differences in discussion effectiveness of learners between the two groups. Furthermore, prior computer-mediated communication (CMC) competence was considered as a background variable to discuss the difference in the discussion effectiveness of learners between the two groups. The research results show that, in comparison with a general online discussion, an IPCS-assisted online discussion could significantly facilitate learners' overall discussion effectiveness, particularly for the sub-dimension of multiple perspectives. Especially, the IPCS could promote the overall discussion effectiveness and sub-dimension of the complexity of learners with low CMC competence to more deeply comprehend and understand the discussion issue than those of learners with high CMC competence. In conclusion, the IPCS developed in this study is an innovative and effective online discussion assisted tool. It would bring the development of online discussion tool into new ground.