Abstract
Online discussions have become important educational activities through which collaborative learning and knowledge construction can be facilitated. This study explores the use of two online discussion tools, online discussion board and VoiceThread, for supporting online course discussion activities among a group of graduate students and investigates the differences in the levels of social presence and social knowledge construction in the two discussion settings. Meanwhile, the participants’ posting behaviors and interaction patterns were also examined. Results reveal that the participants contributed more words when using the audio and video features of VoiceThread. Additionally, the graduate students tended to create more contents and demonstrated more social presence behaviors when interacting with others in the VoiceThread discussion platform. However, the participants exhibited fewer social knowledge construction behaviors than they did in the text-based online discussion board.
Highlights
Online learning is undergoing rapid growth and acceptance at the college level in the United States and represents a significant proportion of all learning for college students (Shea et al, 2011)
To explore the affordances of online discussion technologies for the facilitation of online learners’ interactions and collaborative learning, this study examines the use of two asynchronous tools for supporting online course discussion activities among a group of graduate students and investigates the differences in the levels of social presence and social knowledge construction using the two discussion tools
After Institutional Review Board approval, we recruited a group of graduate students between the ages of 25 and 39 who enrolled in an online course that lasted one semester
Summary
Online learning is undergoing rapid growth and acceptance at the college level in the United States and represents a significant proportion of all learning for college students (Shea et al, 2011). A recent report indicates that 72.7% of undergraduates and 38.7% of graduate-level students in U.S public institutions had online course learning experiences (Allen et al, 2016). It is often assumed that in online learning environments, diversely distributed students and instructors can interact and connect as if they were in a shared location via the use of computer-mediated communication tools (Levine, 2007). As online asynchronous discussions are mostly conducted in a text-based format, typing and writing skills are demanding. Students who are weak in basic computer skills or online writing experience may have difficulty in typing large paragraphs of words (Hew & Cheung, 2013). The lack of verbal cues and social-emotional experience can potentially create confusion in understanding the other’s true meaning and reduce students’ learning motivation and participation in collaborative online discussions (Cui et al, 2013; Hew & Knapczyk, 2007; Yen & Tu, 2008)
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