Levels of web-based discussion:: Theory of perspective-taking as a tool for analysing interaction

The aim of this paper is to present a model how the level of web-based discussion can be analyzed. The model has been developed in an empirical study where we examined the quality of asynchronous interaction in web-based conferencing. Because all successful communication presumes perspective-taking skills and reciprocal understanding among the participants, we studied whether the students are able to reach in reciprocal interaction and thus create educationally relevant high-level web-based discussion. The subjects of the study are pre-service teachers in the USA (N=40) and Finland (N=30) who use an asynchronous web-based tool called Conferencing on the Web (COW) to collaborate in creating joint case-based descriptions in different areas of teaching and learning. The results of the study point out different levels of web-based discussion. More specific analysis of the quality of each discussion level focused on perspective taking in communication. The results support our hypothesis that higher level perspective taking was related to higher level discussion. The relevancy of perspective-taking theory as a tool for analysing web-based discussion is discussed.