Empirical study of teaching presence and critical thinking in asynchronous discussion forums

The discussion forum is a significant component of online courses. Instructors and students rely on these asynchronous forums to engage one another in ways that potentially promote critical thinking. This research investigates the relationships between critical thinking and teaching presence in an asynchronous discussion environment through quasi-experiment, pre-test-post-test design. The results demonstrate that when teaching presence was increased in the discussion forum there was a significant increase in learners’ level of critical thinking.

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