Abstract
Methods for characterizing asynchronous text-based discussions have received significant attention in the literature. In this study, we examine student and instructor posts made in seventeen undergraduate mathematics courses over the duration of a fifteen-week semester (n=6964 posts). We apply our previously developed multifactor discussion board metric to compare differences in student participation, quantities of student posts, quality of posts, extent of threading, and instructor presence in small group and whole class discussion board activities. Results from this study indicate that small group discussions contained greater levels of student participation, greater quantities of posts per student and greater numbers of educationally valuable (content-related) posts per student as compared to whole class discussions within these courses. Interestingly, small group discussions contained a greater proportion of less educationally valuable posts as compared to whole class discussions.
Highlights
Despite the body of literature that endorses cooperative learning strategies, for face-to-face instruction in K-12 settings, the results from higher education and online courses are less conclusive
In Bliss and Lawrence [24], we developed and applied a multi-factor discussion board metric that is suitable for comparative studies
The results of this study indicate that there were significant differences in participation, quantity of posts, quantity of educationally valuable posts, and proportion of educationally valuable talk in small group as compared with whole class discussions
Summary
Despite the body of literature that endorses cooperative learning strategies, for face-to-face instruction in K-12 settings, the results from higher education and online courses are less conclusive. Most of these concerns have been raised from case study based research. We sought to characterize trends on a larger scale by examining differences in participation, quantity of student posts, quality of posts and instructor presence in all online mathematics courses offered by Empire State College that contained both small group and whole class discussion formats. If we consider that a class discussion is a social exchange in which an understanding and framework for course concepts is negotiated, all discussion board activity may be considered a collaborative activity.
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