Participation In Discussion Forums Research Articles

Hybrid Gamification and AI Tutoring Framework using Machine Learning and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System

Although technology has significantly improved the teaching and learning process, it has not been able to increase students' self-motivation and engagement at the same level. The lack of self-motivation and intermittent engagement is currently one of the primary challenges faced by educators. This new approach to learning called the hybrid gamification framework uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to create a more engaging and personalized learning experience. By tracking students' interactions and performance, the system can allocate rewards based on their progress, which helps to increase their motivation and engagement. This technology makes it possible for educators to collect and analyse data related to students' engagement patterns, quiz scores, time spent on learning activities, participation in discussion forums, and much more. This data analysis enables educators to identify struggling students and high achievers, allowing them to provide tailored support and instruction to maximize student success. A pilot implementation of this system involving 200 computer science students successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology. This research provides a comprehensive understanding of gamification's impact by combining quantitative data with qualitative insights.

Guidelines for Supporting a Community of Inquiry through Graded Online Discussion Forums in Higher Education

Graded online discussion forums allow students to interact with course content, peers, and instructors. These discussions have the potential to enhance students’ learning experiences significantly. By adding graded online discussions to an online structured Master’s program in Education, it was necessary to determine the value of these discussions and their contribution to creating an online community. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine how a community of inquiry could support graded online discussions. The study used the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework as its basis. A qualitative exploratory case study design was used, involving eleven purposefully selected participants who were enrolled for a structured master’s program in Education. Data were collected from two sources: feedback from students on their experiences of the online discussions, and the actual online discussions. The data were analyzed using the six-phase thematic analysis approach following a deductive approach. This study revealed that these discussions supported students’ learning and created an online learning community promoting social, cognitive, and teaching presences. These findings have implications for practice. Firstly, fostering social presence is essential for online discussions because it leads to increased engagement, motivation, a sense of belonging, and collaboration. Secondly, online discussions need to be designed with clear guidelines, structured questions, and discussion opportunities. Lastly, online discussions designed to promote cognitive presence challenge students, encourage debate, and assist them in gaining the needed knowledge and higher order thinking skills. Based on these findings, the unique contribution of this study is to provide guidelines for fostering discussion forum participation within the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework. The suggested guidelines can serve as a resource to facilitate effective graded discussion forums in higher education contexts.

DESIGN OF STUDENT SUCCESS PREDICTION APPLICATION IN ONLINE LEARNING USING FUZZY-KNN

Effective evaluation of student performance is crucial. Hence, many kinds of techniques are used such as statistics, physical examination and currently data mining techniques to evaluate student performance. Data mining techniques as known as Educational Data Mining (EDM) collect, process, report and used to find the unseen patterns in the student dataset. EDM uses machine learning techniques to dig out useful data from multiple levels of meaningful hierarchy. Various data from intelligent computer tutors, classic computer based educational systems, online classes, academic data in educational institution, and standar assesment can be process for EDM. This led universities include open and distance learning (ODL) to collect large volume of student and learning data in their learning management systems (LMS). Students in ODL are relatively familiar with LMS and many learning activities such as number of accessing materials, student participation in discussion forum recorded in LMS. The processes of using EDM to improve the quality of educational policy maker with data-based models have become a challange that institutions of higher education face today. Therefore, this study aims to design applications that predict student performance in online learning using machine learning techniques based on EDM. The machine learning technique used in this research is Fuzzy-KNN. Testing using Fuzzy-KNN produces an accuracy of 92.5%.

FORO DE DEBATE ASINCRÓNICO APOYADO POR PROFESORADO EN LA ENSEÑANZA DE MÉTODOS CUANTITATIVOS A ESTUDIANTES DE NEGOCIOS

While asynchronous discussion forums have been widely implemented across different learning environments, there have been mixed findings in terms of their impact on student performance. This study aims to investigate the impact of an asynchronous lecturer-supported discussion forum used to augment traditional Face-to-Face course delivery, on student performance in a Quantitative Methods course taught to business students in the Caribbean. An asynchronous support discussion forum was set up for a group project designed for students to apply quantitative techniques to solve real-world problems. The quantity and quality of student participation and lecturer participation in the discussion forum, represented by student questions and lecturer questions, were investigated to determine their impact on student performance, measured by group project marks for 109 student groups over three academic years. The results showed that neither student participation nor lecturer participation in the asynchronous support discussion forum led to significantly better student performance by way of group project mark. Possible reasons for this finding that is inconsistent with the literature include issues such as voluntary student participation in the forum, multiple other avenues to obtain lecturer support, and the use of questions to represent participation. The study’s conceptual framework points to the importance of specifying the learning environment, learning objective, discussion forum type and engagement type in examining the impact of a discussion forum.

The Camera-on or Camera-off, Is It a Dilemma? Sparking Engagement, Motivation, and Autonomy Through Microsoft Teams Videoconferencing

A videoconferencing system to communicate synchronously is an indispensable tool for educators, teachers, students, parents, and administrators in online courses. One of the effective online learning platforms that can increase student engagement and motivation in online courses is Microsoft Teams. This research aimed to explore English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ views of enacting Microsoft Teams videoconferencing. This study employed a mixed-method design complemented by observation, open-ended questionnaires, as well as in-depth interviews for qualitative analysis in capturing and exploring their experience of synchronous learning using the Microsoft Teams in the post-pandemic. Furthermore, close-ended questionnaires were also distributed as quantitative data. The results revealed that Microsoft Teams helped the learners to be more involved in debates with both faculty and students as a result of their participation in discussion forums. They also gained a better comprehension and knowledge of language learning. It was clear that they were highly motivated and enjoyed the online course due to its ease of use and fun features, and they appreciated direct feedback in the synchronous online meeting. Thus, the learners with strong motivation can develop their learning autonomy. They can monitor and evaluate their self-progress in learning. Further research is highly recommended for exploiting Microsoft Teams to create innovations in a virtual classroom.

Building socially responsible conversational agents using big data to support online learning: A case with Algebra Nation

AbstractA discussion forum is a valuable tool to support student learning in online contexts. However, interactions in online discussion forums are sparse, leading to other issues such as low engagement and dropping out. Recent educational studies have examined the affordances of conversational agents (CA) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically support student participation in discussion forums. However, few studies have paid attention to the safety of CAs. This study aimed to address the safety challenges of CAs constructed with educational big data to support learning. Specifically, we proposed a safety‐aware CA model, benchmarked with two state‐of‐the‐art (SOTA) models, to support high school student learning in an online algebra learning platform. We applied automatic text analysis to evaluate the safety and socio‐emotional support levels of CA‐generated and human‐generated texts. A large dataset was used to train and evaluate the CA models, which consisted of all discussion post‐reply pairs (n = 2,097,139) by 71,918 online math learners from 2015 to 2021. Results show that while SOTA models can generate supportive texts, their safety is compromised. Meanwhile, our proposed model can effectively enhance the safety of generated texts while providing comparable support. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Online discussion forums have been plagued by a lack of interaction among students due to factors such as expectations to receive no response and perceptions of topic irrelevance which lead to low motivation to participate. AI‐based conversational agents can automatically support students' interactions in online discussion forums at a large scale, and their generated responses can be human‐like, contextually coherent and socio‐emotionally supportive. Unsafe discourse exchanges between students and conversational agents can be dangerous as identity attacks, aggravation and bullying behaviours embedded in discourses can disrupt students' knowledge inquiry and negatively influence student motivation and engagement. However, few educational studies have paid attention to the safety of conversational agents. What this paper adds This study proposes and synthesized strategies to build AI‐based conversational agents that automatically support online discussions with safe and supportive discourses. This study reveals the relationship between discourse safety and social support, suggesting supportive discourses can also be unsafe. This study enriches the literature on educational conversational agents by synthesizing a conceptual framework on discourse safety and social support, and by proposing concrete algorithmic strategies to improve the safety of conversational agents. Implications for practice and/or policy Researchers and practitioners can adopt strategies in this study such as generation control, open‐sourced models and public API services to evaluate students' discourse safety for early intervention or modify existing conversational agents to be safety‐aware. Practitioners can utilize the proposed conversational agent to automatically support students both safely and socio‐emotionally at a large scale. Practitioners should be cautious when examining social support with automatic analysis, as not all supportive texts are safe. While unsafe texts can provide emotional support, it does not justify their appropriateness in a learning environment.

Pengembangan Aplikasi Pendaftaran Forum Diskusi Berbasis Web Menggunakan Kombinasi Algoritma Decision Tree Dan Random Forest

A discussion forum is a place that aims to carry out activities by discussing something or exchanging ideas with the aim of knowing common interests. This study aims to simplify the process of a registration system for discussion forum participants so that participant data is more structured by classifying participant data into 2 types, namely ordinary participants and competitor participants. Ordinary participants are participants who participate in all series of activities without being competitors in discussion forum activities, while competitor participants are participants who participate in all series of activities and can make presentations. The research method used is a combination of Decision Tree and Random Forest algorithms, namely a structured or sequential method from the concept planning, modeling, implementation, testing and maintenance stages. In this case, it is necessary to create a website with a management information system design. The information system in making this website must systematically be structural and the technology used for website creation, namely: PHP, HTML, CSS, with a database system using MySQL. The designs that have been designed are starting from the login menu, participant data, participant assignments, materials, participant scores up to the logout menu, while testing has been carried out by accessing the website by 20 users at the same time and can be generated by calculating the seconds obtained From these tests, the database used is increasing, namely 600, 800 to 1,000 participant databases.

Enhancing Learner Engagement Using the Discussion Leaderboard: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Over half of the college students in the U.S took at least one online course in 2019-2020. It is ever more important to deliver an interactive quality experience to a growing online learning community. Asynchronous discussion forum is a widely used tool to help accomplish that goal and to develop reciprocity and cooperation among students, a foundational practice in education. However, it is often challenging to make online discussion forums a venue for meaningful learning. A review of the literature points to low student participation and engagement as a top challenge. This study applies social cognitive theory to address the issue. In social cognitive view, there are three sets of (triadic) determinants: personal factors, behavior, and environmental events interacting mutually in online discussion forums. The study posits that a leaderboard can trigger personal and environmental influences on learner behavior changes to foster discussion forum participation. A student-facing discussion leaderboard was implemented in a graduate engineering elective at a private research university in the U.S. in Summer and Fall 2021. The findings indicate the leaderboard intervention instigates the interaction between self-efficacy (personal factor) and social modeling (environmental influence) and contributes to the improvement of learner engagement.

Mediating epistemological access through asynchronous online discussion forums during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for re-imagining online collaborative self-directed peer engagement and learning

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated the burgeoning of online learning and asynchronous online discussion forums in higher education due to restrictions on face-to-face teaching and learning interactions. Previous research on asynchronous online discussion forums focused on the processes that enhance or limit discussion threads and how discussion posts develop students’ reflection and critical thinking skills. Although asynchronous online discussion forums are regarded as spaces for interactive learning, very little is known about how they facilitate epistemological access and enable collaborative peer learning interactions during periods of disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study explores voluntary asynchronous online discussion forum participation in a non-credit bearing course from a unique angle of mediating epistemological access to online learning. This study draws on connectivist theory as a theoretical framework in a digital age where the student is in control of engagement interaction and information exchange. The central research question posed is how does an asynchronous online discussion forum mediate epistemological access to online learning and facilitate collaborative self-directed peer learning during the COVID-19 pandemic? The present study is underpinned by an inductive qualitative exploratory case study approach. A total of 2 146 discussion posts from 1 348 students across five faculties were downloaded from the learning management system and analysed using thematic analysis. This study indicates that epistemological access using a technology-mediated tool, is best facilitated through agency at the institutional, the instructor and the student level. The findings show that despite academic and technological challenges an online discussion forum enables epistemological access, interactive exchange of information and the formation of collaborative peer learning communities. In an age of digital inequalities, this study provides a starting point to uncover ontological barriers to epistemological access to online learning and signals the importance of integrating epistemological access, pedagogy and technology. This article concludes with implications for re-imagining the design of online multi-modal pedagogy to mediate online collaborative self-directed peer engagement and learning.

Implementasi Sistem Informasi untuk Pemantauan dan Evaluasi Efektivitas E-Learning

This study discusses the monitoring and evaluation of e-learning activities through the LMS (Learning Management System) application of Pamulang University. In the previous process, the system used could only display activities carried out by lecturers that were recorded in the e-learning log. The logs that are displayed only create, update, delete activity, and cannot provide information about the effectiveness of online learning. Other parameters are needed to measure the effectiveness of online learning. One of them is the number of activities lecturers have to do for each subject within a certain period. In each course, the lecturer activity frequency is called create. Create is intended to open discussion topics by providing questions and responses to students' answers. From the results of monitoring, the achievement of creation is not sufficient to determine the success of implementing e-learning at Pamulang University. So that several other restrictions are needed such as participation, intensity, and content suitability. However, problems that occur in other parameters cannot be monitored just by looking at the data from the e-learning log. From these problems, a visual presentation of the activities of lecturers and students is needed which allows Study Programs with low percentages to be identified as quickly as possible, and decision making can be determined. The results showed that the four parameters can be implemented in the system. The average value of student participation in discussion forums is 74.99%, the ratio of the intensity of the activeness of lecturers and students every day of the week during the implementation period is 49.40%. Then the content suitability obtained an average of 0.04% and an average value of 65.90% lecturer activity. The generating facility automatically shows the four parameters in cooperation with the final result considered to assess the effectiveness of e-learning.

Local Democracy and Community Participation: The Role of Information and Communication Technology

This study aims to analyze the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in increasing community participation in local democracy. The research method used is a qualitative method with a literature study approach by collecting data from various sources related to the implementation of ICT in community participation in local democracy. The results of the analysis show that ICT has an important role in increasing community participation in local democracy. ICT enables community participation in various activities such as elections, participation in discussion forums, and access to public information. ICT also makes it easy for the government to convey public information and receive input from the public. However, the challenges in implementing ICT to increase community participation in local democracy also need attention. These challenges include people's access to technology which is still limited and the lack of participation from certain community groups such as the elderly, the elderly, and the disabled. This study recommends the importance of developing ICT infrastructure and training for the community regarding the use of ICT in participation in local democracy. In addition, there needs to be a special effort to involve community groups that are less involved in local democratic participation in the use of ICT.

Factors affecting students’ online behavioral intention in using discussion forum

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting university students’ participation in discussion forum of electronic learning platforms of teacher–student interaction.Design/methodology/approachOne-stage cluster sampling was used and a cross-sectional survey of 113 university students from four courses was done.FindingsA combined model based on United theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and DeLone and McLean models serves as a research framework. Female and male students’ behavioral intentions were affected by different factors. System quality affects male students’ behavioral intention and information quality affects female students’ behavioral intention. Social influence affects female students’ behavioral intention but male students. Men are more focused on the hardware and women are more focused on the content of the message.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited by the nature of university students. User experience and underlying perceived risk are possible moderators. Dyad approach could be considered. One way to enhance students and teachers’ academic discussion is to establish a closed university social media site. The site should be made mobile-friendly with chatbot included.Originality/valueThe results support the validity of the proposed new research framework on e-learning platform by the constructs coming from two established models: UTAUT model and DeLone and McLean’s model. Factors affecting intention and use behavior in discussion forum are different for male and female students. System quality affects male students’ behavioral intention, while information quality affects female students’ behavioral intention. Social influence affects female students’ behavioral intention but not male students.

An Asynchronous University Distance Course as a Possible Model for International Online Collaboration

A reassessment and discussion of distance education (DE) in the higher education is crucial in a situation when many students over the world have become e-learners and several international exchange programs were suspended. Our study is related to international online collaboration in a sociology course where university students from four countries participated. We created an innovative design for an international online course and successfully ran it for about 15 years. The research addresses what the key factors are in order to make an international distance course a useful practice case, and how these factors contribute to the effectiveness of such a course and the level of students’ satisfaction. On the basis of our long-term collaboration, we identified the key factors that stimulated the high level of student involvement in online dialogue and the high level of satisfaction. The article argues that online asynchronous technology and online dialogue in the form of student-led discussions (SLD) organized for regular interaction among students and between students and lecturers are key factors in the course’s success. An additional factor is the regular motivation of the students by the teachers in the form of technical and pedagogical support. The model discussed in this article takes into account all these factors. Its effectiveness is confirmed by the students' level of satisfaction with our class and the high level of student engagement. It enables students from different countries to equally communicate online and freely exchange ideas among themselves and with the teachers. Student-oriented teaching methods and the careful design of the course were also significant for success. The article concludes that an asynchronous e-learning university course emphasizing students’ regular participation in discussion forums can be a useful model for international collaboration where students from different countries are involved.

The Effects of Online Learning during the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) towards Grade 10-12 Thai Students’ Opinions

This study aimed to study the effects of integrating online learning in schools during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Thailand from mid-March to July 2020. The participants were 508 students consisting of grade 10-12 levels from five different schools in each province of Thailand. The questionnaire employed via “Poll Feature Line Group” was separated into three categories; 1) The general informations of the students, 2) The advantages of online learning, and 3) The limitations of online learning. 508 students gave the feedback by checking the items of the questionnaires via “Poll Feature Line Group”. The researchers took two weeks to complete the survey in October 2020. The results of the questionnaire were calculated into the statistical values in Percentage, Mean Range and Standard Deviation. The results revealed that the majority of the students studying online studied in grade 12 in science-mathematics program, and Thai and English subjects were primarily available online. The most three advantages were – 1) Online learning promotes the social distancing., 2) Online learning helps students save time and cut on expenses especially transport costs., and 3) Students can communicate via various platforms like Line, Email, Facebook, and Google Classroom. On the contrary, the most limitations were – 1) Students have no chance to participate in extracurricular activities in school., 2) The mere presence of a smartphone reduces students' ability to focus on the lessons., and 3) It can be hard to find answers to questions or resolve difficulties, especially when discussion forum participation is low.

Comprehensive Analysis of Discussion Forum Participation: From Speech Acts to Discussion Dynamics and Course Outcomes

Learning in computer-mediated setting represents a complex, multidimensional process. This complexity calls for a comprehensive analytical approach that would allow for understanding of various dimensions of learner generated discourse and the structure of the underlying social interactions. Current research, however, primarily focuses on manual or, more recently, supervised methods for discourse analysis. Moreover, discourse and social structures are typically analyzed separately without the use of computational methods that can offer a holistic perspective. This paper proposes an approach that addresses these two challenges, first, by using an unsupervised machine learning approach to extract speech acts as representations of knowledge construction processes and finds transition probabilities between speech acts across different messages, and second, by integrating the use of discovered speech acts to explain the formation of social ties and predicting course outcomes. We extracted six categories of speech acts from messages exchanged in discussion forums of two MOOCs and each category corresponded to knowledge construction processes from well-established theoretical models. We further showed how measures derived from discourse analysis explained the ways how social ties were created that framed emerging social networks. Multiple regression models showed that the combined use of measures derived from discourse analysis and social ties predicted learning outcomes.

Addressing Educational Needs in Managing Complex Pain in Cancer Populations: Evaluation of APAM: An Online Educational Intervention for Nurses.

Cancer-related pain is associated with significant suffering and is one of the most challenging symptoms to manage. Studies indicate that front-line clinicians often lack the knowledge on best practices in cancer pain management. The current project, a quality improvement (QI) initiative, evaluated the outcome of an online educational intervention for nurses on complex cancer pain management. An online 7-module educational intervention, Advanced Pain Assessment and Management, was offered from 2012 to 2017. Pre-post course evaluations included self-reported knowledge and confidence across cancer pain management domains. In-course competency assessments included knowledge examination, online discussion forum participation, opioid dosage calculation assignment, and small-group-based case study. A mixed-model statistical analysis was used to assess pre-post course change in pain management confidence level. In all, 306 nurses from 89 hospitals in Ontario, Canada, were enrolled in the course; 81.4% returned the precourse survey and 71.9% successfully completed the course. The average confidence level on pain management was low at baseline (57.5%) but improved significantly post-course. In-course competency assessments ranged from 81% to 89%. Mixed-model results showed post-course improvements in confidence levels, independent of sociodemographic background, clinical role, and professional educational level. Nurses with longer years of practice and more cancer cases reported greater confidence. A facilitator-led online educational intervention focusing on complex cancer pain management can significantly improve nurses' knowledge, confidence, and skills. Low baseline knowledge among nurses highlights the pressing need for health-care organizations to implement cancer pain management training as an integral part of health-care QI initiative.

Students' Impressions on the Effectiveness of Online Discussion Forums

Purpose: The study has evaluated the effectiveness of online discussion forums among the students of Abu Dhabi University, UAE. Results: The results have shown strong association between positive learning experience and frequency of student participation in discussion forums. However, no statistical significance (p-value=0.306) has been observed among online forums and age of the participants for developing critical thinking skills. Moreover, a significant difference has been identified in students' participation on the effectiveness of online discussion (p-value=0.000). Conclusion: It is concluded that online discussion forums serve as an efficient and effective tool for interaction among the participants.

Graphical representation of online discussion threads from an academic course in a constructivist setting

Constructivist teaching in virtual environments places particular emphasis on the use of discussion forums. This article presents the implementation of a concept of constructivist didactics through an e-learning course on the Blackboard platform of the Department of Education at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Students were motivated to build knowledge through their participation in discussion forums on the Blackboard platform. Teachers, in their role of moderators, expected to be able to gradually reduce their presence in the debates. The challenge was to be able to measure the extent to which this was achieved, considering that thousands of discussion contributions had to be analyzed. This document describes how the discussion lines can be extracted from Blackboard to be used by UCINET software for social network and thus produce a graphic presentation of the discussion sequences.

Lurking Behavior in Online Psychosocial Discussion Forums: Theoretical Perspectives and Implications for Practice

ABSTRACTImproving outcomes of telebehavioral psychoeducation requires rethinking program design when delivered wholly or partially for self-directed participation. Discussion forum participation often follows the “90-9-1 Rule” where 90% of participants lurk, rather than contribute content. A theoretical perspective on the behavior can help explain its adaptive functions, as well as the threats that this behavior poses to the lurker. Implications for practice require program redesign that actively links individual skills training and group-based discussion. The proposed linking design can synergize individual and group participation to support the development of mutual aid, as well as greater interaction with psychoeducation content and materials.

Teacher Enrollment in MIT MOOCs: Are We Educating Educators?

Participants in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) come from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds and act with a wide range of intentions (Christensen 2013, Ho 2014). Interestingly, our own recent surveys of 11 MITx courses on edX in the spring of 2014 show that teachers (versus traditional college students) are a significant fraction of MITx MOOC participants. This suggests many ways to improve and harness MOOCs, including the potential arising from the collective professional experience of participants, opportunities for facilitating educator networks, MOOCs as a venue for expert-novice interactions, and possible added value from enhancing teacher experience through accreditation models and enabling individual teacher re- use of MOOC content. Here, we present data in detail from these teacher enrollment surveys, illuminate teacher participation in discussion forums, and draw lessons for improving the utility of MOOCs for teachers.