Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the perceived differencesin students' learning experiences and their learning role adjustments by integrating online discussions into the instructional design of two teacher-preparation courses. Forty-eight students participated in this study in a northwestern public university in the spring 2009 semester. The results showed: 1) students indeed appreciated the educational value in the combination of online discussions with F2F discussions; and 2) students found that as learners they changed their normal classroom roles from being passive to more active. Additionally, the majority of the participants recognized the process of reading and writing appeared to translate to more thoughtful and meaningful oral discussions while meeting in the traditional F2F classroom. This activity was shown to fully explore the topic in question after having interactions with peers in online discussions for the assigned reading text. Finally, implications for designing online and F2F discussions are discuss