Social Exchange Incentives to Increase Meaningful Posts and Online Learning

Objective. This study was conducted to determine if social exchange incentives to increase meaningful posts would improve online learning. Meaningful posts focused on understanding concepts (i.e., “I just realized that an ANOVA is the same as a t-test when there are only two groups”). Background. Ransdell, Kent, Gaillard-Kenney, and Long (2010) have shown that digital immigrants from a baby-boomer cohort fare better than digital natives due to social reliance and meaningful posts. Meaningful posts include discussion comments that reflect meaning-based engagement with the course material. Ransdell (2010) has also shown that students with optimal patterns and types of discussion participation do better than those students who just follow a point system of quantity-based engagement. Methods. Students were given four types of social exchange incentives during an online graduate health science course to increase meaningful posts: anticipated reciprocity, personal reputation, altruism, and points. Results. A multiple regression shows that 53% of online learning is predicted by meaningful posts (20%) and homework performance (33%) while total online activity does not predict learning outcomes. Conclusions. Students can be encouraged to increase meaningful posts and improve their own engagement with the online materials.