Text-based Discussion Research Articles

Text analysis: Critical component of planning for text-based discussion focused on comprehension of informational texts

ABSTRACTThis investigation focuses on a tool used in a reading methods course to introduce reading specialist candidates to text analysis as a critical component of planning for text-based discussions. Unlike planning that focuses mainly on important text content or information, a text analysis approach focuses both on content and how that content is presented. Specifically, a text analysis approach engages teachers in identifying those text features that readers can use to understand how the presentation of text ideas is staged and how specific rhetorical and linguistic cues signal connections among those ideas. We report on the initial implementation of the tool with specific attention to insights that can inform teacher educators.

Facilitating academic text-based discussions in initial teacher education: Evaluating specialized knowledge

Facilitating academic text-based discussions in initial teacher education: Evaluating specialized knowledge

Exploring the influence of homogeneous versus heterogeneous grouping on students’ text-based discussions and comprehension

Small-group, text-based discussions are a prominent and effective instructional practice, but the literature on the effects of different group composition methods (i.e., homogeneous vs. heterogeneous ability grouping) has been inconclusive with few direct comparisons of the two grouping methods. A yearlong classroom-based intervention was conducted to examine the ways in which group composition influenced students’ discourse and comprehension. Fourth- and fifth-grade students (N=62) were randomly assigned to either a homogeneous or heterogeneous ability small-group discussion. All students engaged in Quality Talk, a theoretically- and empirically-supported intervention using small-group discussion to promote high-level comprehension. Multilevel modeling revealed that, on average, students displayed positive, statistically and practically significant gains in both basic and high-level comprehension performance over the course of Quality Talk. Further, our findings indicated heterogeneous ability grouping was more beneficial than homogeneous ability grouping for high-level comprehension, on average, with low-ability students struggling more in homogeneous grouping. With respect to student discourse, additional quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed group composition differences in terms of the frequency, duration, and quality of student questions and responses, as well as the types of discourse low-ability students enacted in homogeneous groups. This study expands upon the extant literature and informs future research and practice on group composition methods.

The Emoji Code The Emoji Code: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats Vyvyan Evans Picador, 2017. 264 pp.

This week on the Science podcast, linguist Vyvyan Evans argues that emoji better allow us to signal our attitudes and emotions in text-based discussions, ultimately making us more capable communicators.

Socratic Seminar with Data: A Strategy to Support Student Discourse and Understanding.

A Socratic seminar can be a powerful tool for increasing students' ability to analyze and interpret data. Most commonly used for text-based discussion, we found that using Socratic seminar to engage students with data contributes to student understanding by allowing them to reason through and process complex information as a group. This approach also provides teachers with insights about student misconceptions and understanding of concepts by listening to the student-driven discussion. This article reports on Socratic seminar in the context of a high school type 2 diabetes curriculum that explores gene and environment interactions. A case study illustrates how Socratic seminar is applied in a classroom and how students engage with the process. General characteristics of Socratic seminar are discussed at the end of the article.

I Can Cee You! Using Videos in Online Courses to Promote Student Engagement

Universities worldwide engage students through online learning. One challenge is the ability to promote a community of learners in an online classroom. Faculty teaching online courses can include student video discussion posts to promote engagement and the development of an online student community. Faculty integrate student video posts into graded, online discussion board assignments. Students record and upload videos into online discussion board forums and then respond to one another’s videos using text-based discussion posts. There are benefits and challenges to this teaching method. Having a strong technical support staff can ease the use of video discussion posts in online courses. Overall, video discussion posts promote a sense of community in online courses

Reflection and argumentation in a Moodle mediated discussion board: toward digital literacy

This paper focuses on an asynchronous, text-based online discussion board, part of a Moodle mediated undergraduate class in Applied Linguistics taught in Brazilian Portuguese to 13 undergraduates enrolled at the Rio de Janeiro State University. The research seeks to study how meaning is discursively and textually co-constructed in a collaborative written task carried out by students posting to the forum and relate findings to digital literacy development. To this end, it qualitatively analyzes the discursive, textual and socio-affective strategies present in the postings. At the discourse level, it looks for possible claims, grounds and warrants and examines both the topic framework and discursive strategies that may project coherence (eg. repetitions). It also analyzes reflexivity, by looking at metacommunicative actions such as the integration of knowledge. At the socio-affective level, it examines how participants relate to each other or rather the presence of questions, elaborations and evaluations. The analysis shows a discursive construction that integrates evidence and explanations from previous readings to the postings as well as some claim-ground-warrant sequences. The retakes of ideas previously posted project coherence and allow participants to position themselves as thinkers. From a sociocultural approach to learning, participants' writing unites the cognitive to the social level dynamically, making their act of participating in the forum an inseparable part of their digital literacy and writing development. However, they are hardly critical of texts and their colleagues' contributions. This latter evidence needs to be explored further, as academic literacy as a whole, and that which is digitally mediated ought to include peer criticism. The paper ends by stressing the need for further understanding of how human interaction within an online environment may be affected by computer mediation as well as its possible affordances and constraints for the development of digital literacy in the academic realm.

A Study of Teachers’ Discourse Moves That Support Text-Based Discussions

In theory, engaging students in discussion helps them learn how to understand and think critically about texts. Researchers have sought to identify effective features of teacher-led text-based discussions by designing specific discussion-group programs and investigating their influence on students’ comprehension in upper elementary classrooms. However, little is known about how early elementary teachers guide students’ participation in and learning from whole-group text-based discussions. Because of the potential value of such instruction for developing reading comprehension, this study examines how early elementary teachers used effective discourse moves to support students’ engagement with and understanding of texts. We developed and examined the validity of a measure comprising 10 research-based discourse moves called Support for Students’ Learning from Text (SSLT). It was used to code text-based comprehension lessons in second- and third-grade classrooms. Findings indicated significant associations between teachers’ everyday use of SSLT discourse moves and students’ comprehension and vocabulary achievement.

Understanding Cognitive Engagement in Online Discussion: Use of a Scaffolded, Audio-based Argumentation Activity

<p class="2">The purpose of this paper is to explore how adult learners engage in asynchronous online discussion through the implementation of an audio-based argumentation activity. The study designed scaffolded audio-based argumentation activities to promote students’ cognitive engagement. The research was conducted in an online graduate course at a liberal arts university. Primary data sources were learners’ text-based discussions, audio-recorded argumentation postings, and semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that the scaffolded, audio-based argumentation activity helped students achieve higher levels of thinking skills as well as exert greater cognitive efforts during discussions. In addition, most students expressed a positive perception of and satisfaction with their experience. Implications for practice and future research areas are discussed.</p>

Toward a more dialogic pedagogy: changing teachers’ beliefs and practices through professional development in language arts classrooms

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we report findings from the second year of a three-year research and professional development program designed to help elementary school teachers engage in dialogic teaching to support the development of students’ argument literacy. We define argument literacy as the ability to comprehend and formulate arguments through speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The professional development program was focused on promoting teachers’ use of a specific type of talk called ‘inquiry dialogue’ to achieve the goal of developing students’ argument literacy. We used a single-group pretest-posttest design to assess the impact of the professional development on teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their enactment of inquiry dialogue in text-based discussions. Our analyses of videotaped discussions at the beginning and end of the year showed that there were substantial improvements in teachers’ facilitation of inquiry dialogue and in the quality of students’ argumentation during discussions. Contrary to expectations, however, there were no changes in teachers’ epistemology; teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and knowledge justification remained at a relativist stage throughout the course of the program, suggesting that teachers continued to view all opinions as equally valid and regard arguments and the use of reasons and evidence as idiosyncratic.

Using VoiceThread to Promote Collaborative Learning in On-Line Clinical Nurse Leader Courses.

The movement to advance the clinical nurse leader (CNL) as an innovative new role for meeting higher health care quality standards continues with CNL programs offered on-line at colleges and universities nationwide. Collaborative learning activities offer the opportunity for CNL students to gain experience in working together in small groups to negotiate and solve care process problems. The challenge for nurse educators is to provide collaborative learning activities in an asynchronous learning environment that can be considered isolating by default. This article reports on the experiences of 17 CNL students who used VoiceThread, a cloud-based tool that allowed them to communicate asynchronously with one another through voice comments for collaboration and sharing knowledge. Participants identified benefits and drawbacks to using VoiceThread for collaboration as compared to text-based discussion boards. Students reported that the ability to hear the voice of their peers and the instructor helped them feel like they were in a classroom communicating with "real" instructor and peers. Students indicated a preference for on-line classes that used VoiceThread discussions to on-line classes that used only text-based discussion boards.

Graduate Students’ Readiness and Perceptions of the Pedagogical Application of Collaborative Video Logs

Group work projects are common components of graduate course curricula. Instructors often try to mitigate the benefits of group work projects for students while avoiding negative effects. Informal learning and participatory culture practices like video logs can enhance learning environments. Video logs that promote both informal learning and participatory culture practices have captured the interest of researchers as a popular way to disclose observations, reflections and thoughts about people’s lives and experiences. This study provides insight on how graduate students may respond to participation in a Collaborative Video Logs (CVL) in lieu of group work projects or asynchronous text-based discussion boards. A CVL is a series of videos created by a small group of students addressing a topic and engages students through asynchronous video conversation while promoting ownership, reflection, and academic and social outcomes. This study summarizes students’ past experiences and perceptions of group work projects, technological readiness, and affective responses to participating in a CVL as a course assignment.

Promoting reading comprehension and critical–analytic thinking: A comparison of three approaches with fourth and fifth graders

Comprehending and critically analyzing complex, content-rich text is an essential requirement of academic excellence as well as a life-long skill for students. Unfortunately, students often struggle to comprehend print and digital media, and subsequently, they are unable to complete essential tasks, such as identifying information, making inferences, examining arguments, or vetting sources. In the present study, we compared the effectiveness of three reading interventions (i.e., Quality Talk (QT), Think before reading, think While reading, think After reading (TWA), and TWA/QT Hybrid) in promoting fourth- and fifth-grade students’ reading comprehension and critical–analytic thinking. Specifically, teachers in each intervention delivered the respective instructional mini-lessons in their language arts classes and conducted weekly text-based discussions. The results suggested that the Hybrid and QT interventions were effective at promoting high-level comprehension among fourth- and fifth-grade students. Evidence supported that students participating in the Hybrid and QT interventions engaged in more critical–analytic thinking during text-based discussions than those who received the TWA intervention, as evidenced by statistically significantly greater numbers of student-generated authentic questions and elaborated explanations. The Hybrid and QT interventions were also found to effectively boost students’ oral reading fluency in both grades across two phases. Moreover, fifth-grade students who participated in the Hybrid intervention outperformed their peers from the TWA group on the post-discussion reading comprehension assessments.

Factors affecting pre-service teachers’ participation in asynchronous discussion: The case of Iran

<p>This study reports on a qualitative small-scale exploratory study which examined the factors influencing 32 Iranian pre-service language teachers’ participation in online asynchronous text-based discussion forums. By adopting a multiple case study design and analysing data gathered through semi-structured interviews and participants’ online postings, it was found that access to computers and the Internet or high speed Internet, group size, quality of messages, level of instructor’s involvement, grades, interface qualities, participants’ personal characteristics and attitudes toward online interactions, as well as familiarity and experience with online discussions influenced participants’ level of participation in online discussions. Based on the findings, recommendations are made to help language teacher educators to encourage effective online communication practices in similar educational settings.</p>

Constructing a Plan for Text-Based Discussion

Secondary students are often challenged to make sense of conceptually complex content area texts. Text-based discussion has the potential to facilitate comprehension by engaging students in collaboratively constructing their understanding of important ideas and relationships among ideas while interacting with a demanding text. However, teachers often find it difficult to construct prompts for discussion that effectively facilitate deep thinking. This article describes a professional development process in which middle and high school teachers analyzed texts and prepared plans with prompts to facilitate thinking in the context of text-based discussion. Teacher responses to this experience included (a) implementing the planning process using strong disciplinary knowledge, demonstrating student learning; (b) striving to create a thoughtful discussion plan while balancing competing demands for instructional focus, (c) constrained by required, low-quality curricular materials; and (d) contesting the demands of the professional development experiences.

Learners of Different Language Proficiency Levels and Incidental Focus on Form in Synchronous Text-based Discussion

This study examined the effectiveness of incidental focus on form in facilitating second language learning for learners of different proficiency levels in a synchronous computer-mediated communication environment. Sixteen native speaker (NS)-nonnative speaker (NNS) dyads and fourteen NNS-NNS dyads were formed. The participants completed two communicative tasks. Language-related episodes (LRE), mini-dialogues in which learners either explicitly or implicitly ask or talk about language or question their own or/and interlocutors' language use, were identified and used as a basis for individualized tailor-made tests to assess the learners' subsequent learning outcome. The results reveled that in the NS-NNS dyads, no significant difference in the frequency of LREs produced was found between the lower- and higher-proficiency learners whereas in the NNS-NNS dyads, the lower-proficiency learners produced significantly more LREs than their higher-proficiency interlocutors. Additionally, the learners of both proficiency groups interacting with NSs produced significantly more LREs than learners interacting with NNSs. However, no significant differences were found in the test performance of learners of different proficiency levels in either dyadic type.

Constancy and Variability: Dialogic Literacy Events as Sites for Improvisation in Two 3rd-Grade Classrooms

This multisite study investigates dialogic literacy events that revolved around narrative and informational texts in two 3rd-grade classrooms. The authors offer a metaphor of musical improvisation to contemplate dialogic literacy events as part of the repertoire of teaching and learning experiences. In literacy learning, where there is much structure and also many degrees of freedom, an improvisation metaphor is helpful for considering attentive listening, contingent responding, and creative interplay in the classroom. This study contributes to literature on dialogic literacy events by explicating how teachers and students are interdependent coparticipants who collaboratively construct meaning as they improvise during text-based discussions. The authors analyze discourse from multiple instances of two focal dialogic literacy events: discussions of fables and folktales in a low-socioeconomic-status school in the northeastern United States and discussions of newspaper articles in a middle-class school in the southwestern United States. In both classrooms, moderately open structures, shared repertoires of predictable talk moves, and precomposed material facilitated improvisation in three forms: teacher soloing, student soloing, and group improvisation. Teachers used constancy and variability to facilitate productive dialogic discussions. Such discussions may help teachers address the Common Core State Standards by providing children opportunities to participate in academic discussions related to diverse texts.

Comparing Asynchronous and Synchronous Video versus Text Based Discussions in an Online Teacher Education Course

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether asynchronous video posts and synchronous videoconferencing would create higher levels of teaching and social presence within an online course when compared with the university’s current text-based discussion platform. Undergraduate students in an online teacher education course were randomly assigned to either the text-based discussion platform or the video-based discussion platform. A switched replications design was used and halfway through the semester students switched platforms. Analysis of student interviews and surveys administered at the end of the semester indicated self-reported perceptions of social and teaching presence were significantly higher when using the video-enabled discussion site. Implications of the added value of video, both in synchronous and asynchronous contexts, are discussed and recommendations for further study are provided.

Comparing Asynchronous and Synchronous Video versus Text Based Discussions in an Online Teacher Education Course

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether asynchronous video posts and synchronous videoconferencing would create higher levels of teaching and social presence within an online course when compared with the university’s current text-based discussion platform. Undergraduate students in an online teacher education course were randomly assigned to either the text-based discussion platform or the video-based discussion platform. A switched replications design was used and halfway through the semester students switched platforms. Analysis of student interviews and surveys administered at the end of the semester indicated self-reported perceptions of social and teaching presence were significantly higher when using the video-enabled discussion site. Implications of the added value of video, both in synchronous and asynchronous contexts, are discussed and recommendations for further study are provided.

Entering the Historical Problem Space: Whole-Class Text-Based Discussion in History Class

Background/ContextThe Common Core State Standards reveals how little we understand about the components of effective discussion-based instruction in disciplinary history. Although the case for classroom discussion as a core method for subject matter learning stands on stable theoretical and empirical ground, to date, none of the research on classroom discussion has examined whole-class text-based discussion in secondary history classrooms.PurposeThis study explored how teachers and students in five 11th-grade classrooms participated in whole-class discussion, using intervention materials designed to promote text-based disciplinary discussion. Analysis of videotaped instruction sought to (a) determine the degree to which the instructional materials fostered disciplinary discussion about texts, and (b) analyze teacher talk moves that characterized effective facilitation of such discussions.Research DesignThis qualitative study was embedded in a larger quasi-experimental curricular intervention that found treatment effects on factual recall, historical thinking, and general reading comprehension. In this paper, we analyze classroom videos from five treatment classrooms taken over the course of the six-month intervention. Each teacher was videotaped once per week, for a total of 20 videotaped lessons per teacher.Findings/ResultsAnalyses showed that disciplinary discussion was surprisingly rare, and discussion that promoted historical understanding even rarer. Discussions that were most successful in deepening students’ historical understanding were characterized by talk moves that drew students’ attention to the text, and that stabilized the historical content.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe study has implications for teacher preparation focused on implementation of Common Core State Standards as well as for teacher training in do-main-specific core practices.