Abstract
Whilst peer facilitation is deemed to be a beneficial alterative strategy in an asynchronous online discussion, a review of the literature indicates that previous studies have primarily focused on the instructor as the facilitator. Inquiries into the roles that student facilitators perform and strategies they deploy to promote meaningful dialogues and participation in a student-led online discussion board have not been widely explored. Using posted messages of seven student facilitators in a peer-moderated online discussion forum, this study aimed to address the gap in the literature. Content analysis of the data revealed that the student moderators played four major roles during the discussions: 1) a knowledge constructor who actively engaged in a collective inquiry and contributed to a deeper understanding of a subject matter; 2) a team builder who expended considerable efforts to create group cohesion to achieve their learning objectives as a team; 3) a motivator who encouraged and inspired team members to engage in and contribute to the discussion; 4) an organiser who managed and monitored each phase of the discussion and orchestrated the subsequent group oral presentation. The findings suggest that assigning students to lead online discussions is an effective strategy to foster learner autonomy and nurture student leaders. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications and directions for future research.
Highlights
Advances in technologies over the last two decades have generated a paradigm shift in education where educational technologies, e.g. computer-mediated communication (CMC) and Learning Management Systems (LMS), are used increasingly to support and complement educational practices
Baran and Correia (2009) categorised the strategies used by student facilitators into three types: inspirational facilitation strategy, whereby the student facilitator invited their peers to imagine idealistic teaching and learning scenarios and discuss ways to achieve them; practice-oriented facilitation strategy, whereby participants were encouraged to reflect on real-life teaching and learning contexts; highly structured facilitation strategy, whereby a structure was used to engage peers and guide the conversations
The course under this study focused on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) taught to second-year university students pursuing a Bachelor of Accountancy
Summary
Advances in technologies over the last two decades have generated a paradigm shift in education where educational technologies, e.g. computer-mediated communication (CMC) and Learning Management Systems (LMS), are used increasingly to support and complement educational practices. Current educational practices embrace learner-centred approaches whereby greater emphasis is placed on learners taking charge of their own learning In alignment with this paradigm shift, facilitation in online discussions is perceived as a shared responsibility between teachers and students; assigning students as moderators to lead group activities has become a wide-spread alternative in educational sectors (Demmans, Phirangee & Hewitt, 2017; Phirangee, Epp & Hewitt, 2016; Xie, Yu, & Bradshaw, 2014; Zhong & Norton, 2018). Drawing on the same framework, Ghadirian et al (2018) compared knowledge dimensions and cognitive processes of two discussion groups, highand low-quality, in peer-moderated online discussions, revealing that both groups exhibited the frequent use of metacognitive knowledge and cognitive process of understanding Another line of research into student-facilitated online discussions is process-oriented.
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