T.H.E. Editor(s) (ed.), Book title, 1—6. © yyyy Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. J. VAN DER POL, W. ADMIRAAL & R.-J. SIMONS GROUNDING IN ELECTRONIC DISCUSSIONS: STANDARD (THREADED) VERSUS ANCHORED DISCUSSION CSCL Conference 2003 Abstract This paper identifies ‘grounding’ as an important process in asynchronous electronic meaning oriented discussions and tries to enhance and measure grounding activities, mutual understanding and the relevancy of messages. In this study, 190 first year students collaborated electronically with the goal of processing their literature together. Using a posttest only experimental design students were divided into a group that used a standard discussion board and one that used an annotation or ‘anchored discussion’ system. The used research instruments were: dialogue analysis, questionnaires and focus group interviews. Results will be analyzed and discussed in the light of the difference between the 2 conditions. 1. INTRODUCTION In university teaching, students are more and more engaged in electronic conferencing. This happens especially within the social sciences, where it gives students the opportunity to discuss their literature together outside school hours. Electronic conferencing offers possibilities for increasing ‘ownership’ of ideas and reflection, offered by the delayed nature of the medium. But is the educational potential being reached in educational practice? What does it mean to ‘construct knowledge together’ and does this actually happen? There are clues that suggest that in reality not all potential learning benefits are yet being realized (Hunt, 1996). In many studies the highest forms of ‘constructive’ or ‘knowledge sharing’ activities still seem to be lacking (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997; Sringam & Geer, 2000; Veerman, 2000; Wan & Johnson, 1994). In this study, we try both to increase learning benefits and to develop an instrument that is more sensitive for processes that are taking place. But how to increase learning benefits of electronic conferencing? We believe that for collaborative knowledge construction it is necessary for different ideas to really come in contact with each other. Even when a discussion consists for a large part of replies instead of only new messages, still the connection between different messages can be lacking, with the result that often newly added knowledge would just keep 'floating' on its own, without being further refined or elaborated. In that case, messages merely serve as a ‘trigger’ for new thoughts, instead of receiving thorough attention (Pol, 2001). The use of 'associative feedback' (adding new points that fail to have much consequences for the original idea that was expressed), translates itself to the natural