This paper covers the evaluation of a new approach to support students’ reflection of their communication in online learning settings. Two groups discussed the controversial subject whether Twitter should allow all messages to be tweeted regardless of the content or whether it should block messages that are potentially fake news. The video meetings of these discussions were recorded with the knowledge and consent of all involved persons. The recordings were analyzed by a software tool developed for this purpose by one of the authors, and the group interactions and the discussion flows were visualised in communication reports. The communication reports were designed to help the groups to discern their communication patterns and to enable them to find out which patterns were helpful for the group discussion. The groups reflected on their discussion in two steps: at first by viewing the video, and a second time by viewing the communication report. Comparing the outcome of the first and second reflection shows that additional insights could be gained in step 2: the individual behaviour and how it affected the group discussion, the interaction within the group and whether subgroups had been formed, and what roles had emerged and the value they had for the discussion.

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Link to AACE Library: https://www.learntechlib.org/p/222481

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