The results of this study indicate that there is a clear relationship between the method of software mediated communication employed (basic or advanced) and the results achieved on student final exams. In contrast, the overall level of student participation was not significantly impacted by the frequency or method of software mediated communication employed. These results were consistent across all three studies in the research project. The results of the research study indicated that the use of advanced software features, providing more sophisticated and feature rich interaction, is more important to student outcomes than the overall quantity of communication.