Analyzing Students’ Critical Thinking Levels through Their Responses in Online Discussion Forums

This research was conducted based on the fact that some courses used online discussion forums in teaching and learning processes. Critical thinking is an essential component in online higher education course. Moreover, the students need to think critically in responding to the questions from the teacher to ensure an effective classroom discussion. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to explore the critical thinking levels used by English Language Education department students at UIN Ar-Raniry in Online Discussion Forums. To achieve this end, a qualitative descriptive design was utilized in this study. Content analysis was used in analyzing the students’ critical thinking levels through classifying their responses in the online discussion forums by applying Anderson & Krathwohl (2001) theory about Bloom’s revised taxonomy. The samples are two different online discussion classes that consisted of 42 students. The result of this research showed that the students from two different discussion forums used different critical thinking levels. The first discussion pointed out that the students utilized the Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) level and in the other discussion, the students used Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) level in their responses.