Characteristics promoted in order to develop student's critical thinking disposition in online discussions during a fully online course

Abstract

Online discussion boards were organised to develop the critical thinking disposition of students and their attitude toward disaster mitigation during a fully online course. In order to promote participation in the discussions, an incentive was provided to all discussants. Assessment of the effectiveness of the lecturer’s invitation to join the discussion was conducted to extract which participants posted once, and the learning activity and characteristics of these students was evaluated. In the results, the levels of participation in online discussions affected some factor scores for personality and learning performance.  Also, the causal relationships of the development of literacy of critical thinking disposition were analysed, and the factor of participation level in online discussions was examined.