International Education Journal Vol 2, No 4, 2001 Educational Research Conference 2001 Special Issue http://www.flinders.edu.au/education/iej 159 E-mail discussion and student learning outcomes: A case study Ruth Geer University of South Australia ruth.geer@unisa.edu.au Dr. Alan Barnes University of South Australia alan.barnes@unisa.edu.au E-mail discussion is widely used in university courses and is being increasingly adopted in K-12 education. However making educational value from the massive amounts of e-mail transcripts that can be generated is a problematic task. It is important in an environment of constrained teaching resources that computer driven methods be developed to evaluate effective learning processes. A critical starting point is the relationship between messaging and student learning outcomes. This paper examines student learning outcomes and learning behaviours over three years of an education degree course involving e-mail discussion technology. It documents a clear relationship between the number of messages sent by students through e-mail discussion and the final grade for this course. Normative behavioural patterns that are evident from the transcript data can assist in ongoing educational monitoring. e-mail, collaborative learning, interactive, Internet, evaluation. INTRODUCTION With the increased complexity of the online environment, educators are seeking ways to effectively utilise available technologies for quality teaching and learning. There are a number of factors, such as the type of activity and the assessment requirements that can impact on their effectiveness. Interaction and collaboration have been recognised as key ingredients in the learning process where students are not only active and supportive, but also interactive (Kirby, 1999; Hiltz, 1998; King & Doeffert, 1996). In collaborative learning environments students are actively engaged in supporting each other in the development of higher level reasoning strategies, critical thinking, hypothesis formation and reflection. Email discussion groups can be implemented to support collaborative and discursive interaction. A number of theoretical perspectives, with their foundations in cognitive developmental, behavioural and social interdependence theories (Johnson & Johnson, 1996) are guiding the design of courses and our understanding of how students learn. Extensive research has shown the capability of computer-mediated communication to engender quality learning (Sringram & Geer, 2000; Newman et al., 1997; Gunawardena et al., 1997). More recently Geer & Barnes (2001) have developed rapid sampling techniques to identify metacognitive processing within textual discourse. A major thrust of that research was to provide an analysis of the content and interaction of the participants; and to identify indicators of cognitive and metacognitive learning that demonstrated the presence of quality learning. Such detailed analysis is very time consuming and not always practical during the duration of the course. With an overwhelming quantity of discourse being generated and the time that is required for a detailed analysis of the discourse, educators need to find ways that can readily give them a sense of the educational quality of the discourse so that strategic intervention can