Analysis of student engagement in an online annotation system in the context of a flipped introductory physics class

Kelly Miller,Eric Mazur,David Karger,Sacha Zyto,Junehee Yoo

doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.12.020143

Abstract

We discuss student participation in an online social annotation forum over two semesters of a flipped, introductory physics course at Harvard University. We find that students who engage in high-level discussion online, especially by providing answers to their peers’ questions, make more gains in conceptual understanding than students who do not. This is true regardless of students’ physics background. We find that we can steer online interaction towards more productive and engaging discussion by seeding the discussion and managing the size of the sections. Seeded sections produce higher quality annotations and a greater proportion of generative threads than unseeded sections. Larger sections produce longer threads; however, beyond a certain section size, the quality of the discussion decreases.Received 10 October 2015DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.020143Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasInstructional strategiesLearning environmentProfessional TopicsLower undergraduate studentsPhysics Education Research

Highlights

It is generally accepted that students understand material better after discussing it [1,2]
In the context of a flipped, introductory physics class, we investigate three questions: What is the relationship between students’ participation in the online discussion and their performance in the course? What effect does seeding the discussion with comments from previous iterations of the course have on student participation in the discussion? What effect does varying the number of students in a section have on student participation in the discussion?
At the beginning and end of each semester, we administered a conceptual survey as a pre- and post-test; the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) [27] in the fall semester, and the Conceptual Survey on Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) [28] in the spring

Summary

Introduction

It is generally accepted that students understand material better after discussing it [1,2]. The asynchronous nature of online discussion forums allows for discussion between learners and between learners and instructors at any time of day or night. This is a major advantage over other forms of communication [8]. Other advantages of online discussion forums include greater student participation, enhanced academic performance, and increased opportunity for metacognition [9,10]. Online discussion forums have been shown to promote an increased exchange of ideas [12], an improved ability to make connections between concepts, and to apply the course material to diverse contexts [9].

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Discussion

Conclusion