Mechanisms of common ground in case-based web discussions in teacher education

Previous studies suggest that before participants in web-based conferencing can reach deeper level interaction and learning, they have to gain an adequate level of common ground in terms of shared mutual understanding, knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, and presuppositions (Clark & Schaefer, 1989; Dillenbourg, 1999). In this paper, the purpose is to explore how participants establish and maintain common ground in order to reach deeper level interaction in case-based web discussions. The subjects in this study consisted of 68 preservice teachers and 7 mentors from 3 universities, who participated in a web-based conferencing course for 8 weeks. The written discussion data were analyzed by means…