The purpose of this study was to research the effect of the rubric on discussion processes
and outcomes and to explore the effective strategies of web-based concurrent discussion. The
participants were 23 undergraduate students of D Women’s University and they were divided
into seven groups for concurrent discussion in a web-based environment. Three groups of 10
participants were provided a rubric Type I to conduct self-evaluation and the remaining four
groups of 13 participants were provided a rubric Type II to conduct self-evaluation and
peer-evaluation. The experiment was conducted a total of three times. The first and second
experiments were conducted as pre-training sessions by employing self-explanation activities
with a discussion topic and the third was conducted as a web-based concurrent discussion.
After the concurrent discussion in a web-based environment, all participants submitted personal
argumentative essays as final products. The findings of this study are as follows. The self and
peer-evaluation group scored higher than the self-evaluation group in the degree of
understanding communication and the quality of argumentation. As for the other dependent
measures, satisfaction on discussion processes and group coherence, the self and
peer-evaluation group scored higher than the self-evaluation group. From these results, it was
concluded that peer-evaluation promoted to communicate effectively and improved discussion
outcomes in case of conducting peer-evaluation after pre-training of self-explanation activities in
a web-based concurrent discussion environment.