Do College Students Participate More in Discussion in Traditional Delivery Courses or in Interactive Telecourses? A Preliminary Comparison

Student participation in discussion in traditional delivery and interactive college telecourses are compared. Results indicate that the norm of the consolidation of responsibility continues to prevail in traditional classroom discussion: a few students were responsible for the majority of interactions. However, in telecourses students frequently interacted with classmates at the receiving site but rarely with their instructors and classmates at the sending site.