Students’ Participation in Online Discussion of ESP Course through Team Based Project

Abstract

This study aims to analyze students’ participation in online discussion forum of ESP course with Team Based Project. The materials and process of this model have been designed in the LMS for students. There were 98 participants from 5 classes of ESP course taken as the sample of this research. Various difficulties faced by students in developing communication in writing become more complicated when learning is done online. Team based project is applied because it demands the ability of the students themselves to solve problems (Student Center Learning) and in responding to the acquirement of Indonesian Qualification Framework (IQF) Curriculum that as a new Higher Education Key Performance Indicator (IKU) from the Ministry of Education. A survey with quantitative approach is conducted in this research. The results show that the respondents reacted to numerous responses into many aspects such as; 1) demographic information; 2) patterns of online participation 3) frequency of participation in online discussion forum; 4) percentage of read but no response posts; 5) percentage of response and response posts; 6) benefits of participation in online forum; 7) perceived impact of discussion forum on student learning and performance; and 8) problems of participation in online forum.