Abstract
Discussion is an essential component in case-based learning (CBL), as it offers students the opportunity to consider diverse perspectives, clarify confusion, and construct understanding. As a facilitator bears most of the responsibility for the overall success of CBL, understanding how facilitation strategies influence interactions during discussions is worthwhile. However, previous CBL facilitation research has primarily considered student perspectives during case discussions, without examining relationships between facilitator experience and student interaction and participation. This study combined social network analysis and content analysis to compare the structure of expert and novice instructors’ discussion posts and to consider their relationship to student participation and interaction in online case discussions. Results showed that both the expert and novice instructors used facilitation strategies involving social congruence, cognitive congruence, and content expertise frequently in the discussions; however, when and how they used a combination of these strategies was noticeably different. These differences influenced student interaction. More specifically, students tended to interact with others more actively and densely as a result of questions initiated by the expert facilitator. Suggestions are provided for novice facilitators.
Highlights
Discussion is an essential component in case-based learning (CBL), as it offers students the opportunity to consider diverse perspectives, clarify confusion, and construct understanding
Discussions are considered an important part of CBL, as they offer learners a place to collaboratively make sense of the complexities involved with cases and promote students’ problem solving and higher-order thinking (Ertmer & Koehler, 2014; Ertmer & Stepich, 2002; Yew & Schmidt, 2012)
Research has established the importance of instructor facilitation in generating and maintaining student interaction during case discussions, little consideration has been given to how discussion outcomes differ across expert and novice instructors
Summary
Discussion is an essential component in case-based learning (CBL), as it offers students the opportunity to consider diverse perspectives, clarify confusion, and construct understanding. We used social network analysis (SNA) to identify the discussion structures and interaction among the instructors and students (Yang et al, 2017) and content analysis (Hara et al, 2000) to investigate and compare expert and novice instructors’ facilitation methods (De Laat et al, 2007) By using these methods, we are able to compare differences in student interaction and participation in case discussions resulting from the efforts of a novice and an expert facilitator and offer insight into how specific facilitation strategies can be used to improve case discussions
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