Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Nowadays, online learning is a favorite format for educational experiences because of its adaptability and customizability to students' needs. Allen and Seaman (2016) stated in their report that 5.8 million American students were enrolled online courses in 2014, with 2.85 million students taking all of their courses. They also noted 63.3 percent of higher education academic leaders have agreed that online learning will become essential to their long-term strategy. It is an advantage of online learning that students can learn at their own pace without any limitations in time or space. However, also it is a disadvantage when the motivation and participation during the online course cannot be maintained long-term without assistance. To resolve the problem, researchers have proposed sending reminders and learning content through email (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi, 2013; Hodges, 2008; Hodges & Kim, 2010) or a short message service (SMS) (Hayati et al., 2013) to foster study. Nevertheless, these systems remain a solo endeavor, and the relationship difficulties that are frequently recounted by students remain, including the lack of interaction between students (Park, 2007; Safford & Stinton, 2016), difficulty in initiating and maintaining communication (Rice & Carter Jr, 2016), the ambiguity of posted messages, and technical problems (Park & Choi, 2009; Vayre & Vonthron, 2017).
Many researchers pointed out that peer interaction is an essential part of learning (Aghaee & Keller, 2016) and an essential element in online learning in recent studies (Aghaee & Keller, 2016; C. H. Lai, Tho, & Liang, 2017; Robson, 2016; Yemen-Karpuzcu, Ulusoy, & Işıksal-Bostan, 2017; Yu-Tzu, Ming-Puu, Chia-Hu, & Pu-Chen, 2017). Yemen-Karpuzcu et al. (2017) introduced the interaction between students as “…an important requirement for learning since it provides opportunities for them to formulate ideas, reveal their understanding, and reflect on their thoughts.” Also, the engagement in peer interaction push students to construct ideas genuinely, and also increases their achievement (Aghaee & Keller, 2016). However, there have been a limited number of studies assessing how to use ICT in peer interaction efficiently (Liu, Chen, & Tai, 2017; Yemen-Karpuzcu et al., 2017) and what are the influencing factors on learners' peer interaction experiences (L. S. Anderson & Hildenbrand, 2009) and quality outcomes (Aghaee & Keller, 2016; Carini, Kuh, & Klein, 2006; Yang & Wu, 2011; Yu-Tzu et al., 2017).