I know i have expressed this in past papers but their has not been enough work in the area of comparing the distribution of types of communication units in various types of group discussions online vs. normal face to face group discussions. The first controlled experiment comparing the two using Bales coding showed very significant differences. There are a tremendous number of online discussions that it would be interesting to analyze including online courses which has never been done. i suspect just looking at what the instructor said in these discussions vs. whether they had high or low ratings by the class would be a significant result. All types of problem solving discussions are also of interest and information exchange discussions as well. Here are the full reports from roxanne's original experiments with far more detail then ever appeared in teh journal article. this is from the following njit library location http://library.njit.edu/archives/cccc-materials/index.php RR#12 Face-to-face vs. computerized conferences : a controlled experiment, Volume I: Findings<http://archives.njit.edu/vol01/cccc-materials/njit-cccc-rr-012/njit-cccc-rr-012.pdf> Aug. 1980 Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Kenneth Johnson, Charles Aronovitch, Murray Turoffbegin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting RR#12a Face-to-face vs. computerized conferences : a controlled experiment, Volume II: Methodological Appendices<http://archives.njit.edu/vol01/cccc-materials/njit-cccc-rr-012a/njit-cccc-rr-012a.pdf> Aug. 1980 Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Kenneth Johnson, Charles Aronovitch, Murray Turoffbegin_of_the_skype_highlighting -- Distinguished Professor Emeritus Information Systems, NJIT homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff