Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 97

Internet Learning
Interactive 3. Thread Timeline with Corpora. onTargetThread chosen for Response 1.
In Response 2, Renlit responds to
Renlit’s own lead post with another media
example. In the corpus diagram for responseLevel
(Figure 13), we can see that Renlit’s
three longest posts are first-level responses,
in keeping with the first-level post in the
current example (Renlit.582). Response 2
(Renlit.112) is in the lower tier of Renlit’s
second-level responses by wordCount.
Renlit responds to Naya’s question/spreadRequest
nudge with another
detailed explanation of analytics applications
in the wine industry. Figure 17 illustrates
that while most student posts in this
thread are coded at topicSpread=Level 3/
Elaborate, Renlit’s final response in the
question-and-answer chain with Jakata and
Naya increases to topicSpread=Level 4/Expand.
By this point, the conversation has
become a technical and specific discussion
between the lead author and the two instructors.
It is interesting to note that both
instructors have nudged the lead author
deeper into material from the lead post, but
neither has explicitly attempted to open the
discussion to other participants.
Comparative Thread Analysis
We can compare and differentiate individual
thread graph timeline diagrams just as
we can individual corpus diagrams. Figure
18, Figure 19, and Figure 20 compare the
now-familiar Renlit thread to the Kerrad
thread, which took place simultaneously
in the same discussion group and is pictured
at the bottom of Figure 10. Figure
18 shows instructors Jakata and Naya each
asking short, prompting questions (spread-
Request=Level 3/Elaborate) of both lead
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