Analysis of factors affecting online learning

In this study, we expect that certain types of prompts will exercise people's matacognitive ability and influence their participant in the online discussion. We used two primary types of prompts-email reminders to participate in the discussion and feedback to the discussion postings. Study results show participants consider email reminders helpful in making them enter the discussion board more often, and they post to the discussion board after reading other's feedback to their postings. We also found that discussion topics played and important role in determining people's frequency of postings to the discussion board.