Influence of participation, facilitator styles, and metacognitive reflection on knowledge building in online university courses

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how different levels of participation, tutorship styles, and metacognitive reflection in an online course can influence the group’s knowledge building. 131 undergraduate students in Psychology and 59 students in the Educational Sciences and Primary Education Sciences participated in the study. Results show that a central level of participation is associated with a higher level of epistemic agency required for Knowledge Building. A supportive tutorship style and opportunities for metacognitive reflection on their own participation strategies are also related to the students’ advanced epistemic agency. Implications of these results for research and instructional design of online courses are discussed.