Interpretation Issues in Monitoring and Analyzing Group Interactions in Asynchronous Discussions

DIAS is an asynchronous discussion forum software, mainly developed in order to offer extended monitoring and interaction analysis support, by providing a wide range of indicators jointly used in various situations, to all discussion forae users (individual students, groups, moderators/teachers or even researchers/observers), appropriate for their various roles in different activities. In this paper we focus on the explanatory and interpretation issues that arise when the integrated interaction analysis (IA) features are used by a teacher – moderator. Core objective of this paper is to outline the importance of appropriate interpretation of the IA indicators. The notion of interpretative schemas is deployed and their potential exploitation is thoroughly explored, using examples from real teaching settings. In fact, the significance of interpreting visualization data in a combined way and from different perspectives is designated, leading to the conclusion that this issue needs to be further researched.