SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY AND ONLINE EDUCATION: RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM WITHIN THREADED DISCUSSIONS

This project measures the relationship between professorial and student discourse within threaded discussions in a doctoral online education program, as calculated by various readability formulas and language metrics. Initial results from a study of 448 students in 28 identical course sections indicate the efficacy of professorial modeling. Those results via an analysis of variance indicated that a professor's lexical density in threaded discussion responses does influence student responses in those same online discussions. Correspondingly, the influence of Bandura's Social Learning Theory - the notion that most human behavior is learned by observation and in turn this coded information then serves as a model for action, appears evident. Thus, viewed within the context of social learning theory, these findings suggest new research-based best practices in post-secondary online education, and may inform methodological approaches for future faculty training, development, and peer reviews.