The Relationship Between Demographic Characteristics and Engagement in an Undergraduate Engineering Online Forum

Abstract

This Research Category Full Paper explores the relationship between the demographic characteristics of students and their participation in an online forum. Online discussion forums have become widely used in undergraduate classrooms. They extend the learning space beyond the classroom and provide asynchronous opportunities for peer-to-peer collaborations. Past studies have suggested that online posting behavior plays a role in students’ learning outcomes; however, the study of the demographic characteristics of students who do or do not participate in online discussions is limited. We address this research question here. We chose our demographic variables based on prior studies of students’ general online behaviors, and therefore we compare gender, race/ethnicity and international status, as well as declared majors, with engagement in the online forum. The discussion forum provided a platform for the students to ask or answer their peers’ questions about the course material and homework assignments. The setting for this study was a sophomore-level dynamics and vibrations class that incorporated active, blended, and collaborative learning strategies. We tracked an individual’s posting behavior throughout a semester. Study participants were grouped by whether they posted to the discussion forum at least once, and the Chi-squared test of independence was used to determine the statistical significance of demographic differences across the participation groups. The data show that female students were significantly more likely to be involved in online discussions than their male counterparts. Also, White and Asian American students were overrepresented, and international and Hispanic students were underrepresented in the engaged group. Interestingly, students who were required to take this specific course as a graduation requirement do not show more engagement than those who took this class for general engineering credits. This work extends our knowledge of who uses online collaboration tools, and in the future, we will analyze the content of the engagement (posts and comments) and explore the influence of forum participation on the students’ grades.