RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Impact of Time Delay on the Content of Discussions at a Computer- Mediated Ergonomics Conference
Byron C. Huntley *, Andrew Thatcher *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 1
First Page: 10
Last Page: 19
Publisher Id: TOERGJ-1-10
DOI: 10.2174/1875934300801010010
Article History:
Received Date: 20/02/2008Revision Received Date: 13/03/2008
Acceptance Date: 14/03/2008
Electronic publication date: 3/4/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between the content of computer-mediated discussions and the time delay between online postings. The study aims to broaden understanding of the dynamics of computer-mediated discussion regarding the time delay and the actual content of computer-mediated discussions (Knowledge construction, Social aspects, Number of words, and Number of postings). A sample drawn from the computer-mediated discussions of the CybErg 2005 virtual ergonomics conference served as the data for this study. The Interaction Analysis Model was utilised to analyse the level of knowledge construction in the content of the computer-mediated discussions. The correlation results demonstrate that Knowledge construction, Social aspects and Number of words generated within postings were independent of, and not affected by, the Time delay between the postings and the postings from which the replies were formulated. When greater numbers of words were utilised within postings, this was typically associated with a greater level of knowledge construction. Social aspects in the discussion were found to neither advantage nor disadvantage the overall effectiveness of the computer-mediated discussion.