Introducing an informal synchronous medium in a distance learning course: How is participation affected?

Achieving active participation has been argued to be an intrinsic part of learning and has become a central issue in debates on online education. This research examines whether an emerging synchronous communication medium, instant messaging (IM), may enable students in participating more actively in a distance learning course. In doing this, it is first evaluated how the system was used. When comparing two offerings of the course, where the first was delivered asynchronously and the second was complemented with an IM system, results indicated that the first class operated with a higher level of participation. However, when comparing students that adopted the IM system with those that did not it was found that the adopters operated with a higher level of participation. Since the results are tentative, the paper is concluded by calling for further research that tests the results of this study in both similar and different contexts.