Analysing high school students’ participation and interaction in an asynchronous online project-based learning environment

This study aims to replicate and extend a previous study which was conducted on primary school students’ asynchronous online project-based learning. In this study, 276 high school students’ participation and interaction in a project-based learning environment was mediated by an asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) tool. The students’ high participation revealed their adaptability to this teacher-facilitated learning environment. However, in terms of interaction, these students’ notes were found congregating mainly in phase I (comparing and sharing information, 82.7%) but lesser extent in the subsequent phase II (the discovery and exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas, concepts or statement, 13.5%), phase III (negotiation of meaning/co-construction of knowledge, 3.7%) and beyond when these notes were analysed using Gunawardena’s Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) (1997). These findings were compared, discussed and referenced to the earlier research conducted in the primary school to surface gaps for future research that will focus on addressing obstacles to students’ learning issues pertaining to participation and interaction socially and cognitively in such a learning environment.