Improving AOD participation and interaction: The combined effects of role assignment and time-frame design

Asynchronous online discussion (AOD) is a tool used to supplement and extend synchronous classroom interaction. It still faces problems, however, such as difficulty maintaining participation, information overload caused by a large amount of textual information, and difficulty managing discussion quality. Designing effective strategies to support AOD quality is imperative, and research has shown that the design of role strategies and time-frames can maintain AOD order and quality, stimulate participation and interaction, and promote deep thinking and responses. Although the implementation of these two strategies in AOD has been widely studied, there is still little research on their combined use. This study therefore combined role strategies with time-frames, designed role strategies under multiple time-frames, and conducted a two-week asynchronous online role-based discussion with 117 third-year undergraduate students in two classes to explore the effectiveness of adopting this strategy in AOD. The results showed that setting multiple time-frames in AOD and clearly assigning roles and responsibilities within the different time-frames can effectively improve students' participation and interaction in discussions and their learning satisfaction, which leads to certain benefits for learning results. Based on the results, three practical implications are proposed to promote the implementation of AOD in teaching.