Students' engagement in asynchronous online discussion: The relationship between cognitive presence, learner prominence, and academic performance

Abstract

The growth of online learning environments entails understanding of how to promote collaborative knowledge construction processes and create learning environments that support meaningful student engagement and interactions. Asynchronous online discussion forums are intended to support knowledge construction and higher-order thinking and are becoming even more appealing for their predictive relationship with learning. This paper describes a study that explored the complex dynamics of knowledge construction in pre-service teacher education through examining student teachers' cognitive presence in online discussion forums and their academic performance. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that certain levels of cognitive presence were associated with students' academic performance. In addition, network analysis of discussion forums revealed that student centrality within their learning networks moderated the association between the highest level of cognitive presence and academic performance. The paper concludes with discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.