The goal of this study is to better understand how the study participants' cognitive discourse is displayed in their learning transaction in an asynchronous, text-based conferencing environment based on Garrison's Practical Inquiry Model (2001). The authors designed an online information ethics course based on Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives and Bird's 3C model (Content-Construction-Consolidation). The content analyzed included the participants' message posts, the quality of the dialogue and the scaffolding strategies for mentoring used by group leaders and teachers. The findings revealed that the discourse quality was influenced by hard scaffolding (i.e., the teaching goal and the nature of the issue at hand). Given this fact, if issues were either theoretical (Issue 1) or controversial (Issue 4), resources that were explicitly related to the issue must be provided to allow for discussion; otherwise, opportunities were limited for follow-up scaffolding intervention. If the issue was related to life experience (Issue 2) or case discussion (Issue 3), it would be easier to promote improved discourse quality and maintain the flow of discourse through adaptive and dynamic scaffolding (i.e., providing related material to enrich prior knowledge, weaving it into the discussion and summarizing it to provide resonance). (Contains 5 tables and 4 figures.)