Use Of Online Discussion Forum Research Articles

Through the Lens of Students: How Online Discussion Forums Affect Students’ Learning

The current exploratory study investigated the perspectives of 13 students about the use of online discussion forums in a virtual English Language course at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. A mixed methods approach utilizing self-report questionnaires, focus group interviews, and researcher observation was used to collect data. The study results showed that the majority of the participants viewed asynchronous discussion forums positively. Most importantly, the study revealed that participation in these forums enhanced various aspects of students’ learning including critical reading, critical thinking and critical reflection skills, behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement, as well as their social skills. On the other hand, the study results showed that online discussion forums were associated with several challenges. These findings have pedagogical implications on the design and implementation of these forums in the EFL field. The article calls for further research on online discussion forums in relation to students’ level of study, academic achievement, and exam pass rates in various EFL courses.

Peningkatan Hasil Belajar Mahasiswa melalui Forum Diskusi Online di Jurusan PGSD FKIP Universitas Syiah Kuala

The use of online discussion is an alternative mode of learning during the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of online discussion forums on the learning outcomes of the students at PGSD FKIP Universitas Syiah Kuala, especially in the Lesson Planning course. This study used a pre-experimental research method with a One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design. The research was conducted in the Even Semester of the 2020/2021 Academic Year. 17 students participated in the study. Through hypothesis testing using a paired sample t-test with a significance level of 5%, it was found that there was a significant difference between students’ learning outcome before and after the use of online discussion. Thus, it can be concluded that there is a significant effect of the use of online discussion forums on students’ learning outcomes at PGSD FKIP Universitas Syiah Kuala.

The impact of career focused online discussion forums

This mixed method research project investigated the impact and utility of online discussion forums (ODFs) hosted by the The Open University (UK) Careers and Employability Services in supporting the career identity, learning and development of Open University students. Despite a substantial evidence base underpinning the use of ODFs within online learning environments for pedagogical applications there is a paucity of scholarly activity linking student participation within ODFs for specific career learning and career development purposes. In addressing this gap, this novel research draws upon influential career theory relating to career learning and career identity to situate student and staff perceptions of careers focussed ODFs and their impact. To achieve this the interactions of higher education students were analysed within six selected ODFs whilst more in-depth insights were captured through student questionnaires and staff interviews. The findings of this study demonstrate the wide-ranging benefits of ODFs for the growth of career identity and learning, and also as a space where critical community inquiry can occur, contributing to deeper approaches to learning for participants.

Development of Criticality in Thought: A Conceptual Framework for Online Student Discussion Forums in Higher Education

Assessing student understanding and extending student learning beyond the face-to-face or synchronous online lesson is commonly done with the use of online discussion forums. However, the challenge reported by tutors of higher education has always been the lack of active participation and critical engagement by students unless the task is graded formally. Researchers have been investigating various approaches to facilitate effective learning experiences such that students are motivated to engage others when they are tasked to partake in such asynchronous discussions. This paper explores how I sought to engage my Engineering undergraduate students, reading a critical thinking and writing module taught in a blended learning environment, in online discussion forums with the adoption of the Paul-Elder critical thinking framework. The aim was to develop higher levels of criticality in thought in students’ forum responses, while demonstrating the application of the critical thinking tools, such that they were able to collaboratively construct knowledge and deepen their conceptual understanding of Engineering leadership. Results of the analysis found that students were engaged in spontaneous dialogic discussions in the form of repeated extended posts published in the online discussion forums. Furthermore, analysis of student critical reflection essays also confirmed that the online discussion forums, with a deliberate use of the tools of the framework, had contributed to their development of critical thinking skills to deepen their understanding. This paper concludes with a recommendation for tutors of higher education to make the assessment of students’ critical reflection or critical thinking skills visible for students with a proposed conceptual framework for online discussion forums.

The use of online discussion forums and communities for health research.

The use of online discussion forums and communities for health research.

Facilitating Online Learning: Students’ Online Discussion Strategies for a Project Work at a Technical University in Malaysia

The use of online discussion forum is slowly penetrating into classroom teaching and learning as studies have proven that it contributes to a positive learning environment, provided that learners and educators know how to use it effectively. In order to know how to use the online discussion forum effectively, this study was conducted. The research objective was to identify the online discussion strategies employed by the participants. This case study involved fifteen 2 nd semester Engineering Technology Malaysian undergraduates enrolled in “Professional English 1” course. Data were gathered from a focus group interview, individual interview and participants’ reflective notes. Five participants volunteered to be interviewed individually and the remainder express their interest to be interviewed in a focus group interview. The participants were interviewed immediately after their online discussion activities. The participants were also asked to reflect to their opinions on their online discussion experience after each online discussion activities. These findings indicate that participants employed three online discussion strategies to facilitate their project work, namely: 1) devising and coordinating ideas before posting 2) interpreting others’ responses before posting their ideas online, and 3) ratifying their own statements before posting. These strategies were employed by the participants to complete a proposal for a Community Service Responsibility (CSR) project. It is hoped that these findings could provide insights and create awareness among the lecturers on the strategies employed by the participants so that more effective and meaningful online discussions could be carried out. Keywords: Online Discussion Strategies; Project Work; Engineering Undergraduate Students; Technical University; Case Study

Measuring Participation in Distance Education Online Discussion Forums Using Social Network Analysis

Distance Education professionals have been constantly coming up with methods and techniques to increase student participation in an environment where learning happens continuously and asynchronously. An online discussion forum (ODF) is one of these mechanisms, but it will only be successful if students are willing to participate. Stimulating students is a challenge many institutions currently face. The objective of this study was to analyze the social interaction among participants in ODFs using Social Network Analysis. Knowing the characteristics of these networks and its participants is important to design actions to improve the use of ODFs. As a case study, data were collected from ODF logs of the majors in Business Administration and Accounting in a Brazilian private university. This study found out that these interaction networks are sparse, which shows that students could be more engaged in interacting and collaborating with others. Students, in general, tend to interact more in the first semester and interaction diminishes as time passes. The number of active ODF participants has been around 45–50%, which shows that students currently do not participate very often in ODFs. Their main incentive seems to exist when they are graded. Popular ODFs were also analyzed.

Performance Prediction in Online Discussion Forum: state-of-the-art and comparative analysis

This survey paper is designed to present the state-of-the-art and comparative study of performance prediction in online discussion forum using data mining techniques and is dedicated to provide a guideline or roadmap as a prediction tool leading to effective interactions with full use of online discussion forum. There are different features, methods and techniques of data mining applying performance prediction in online discussion forum from 2011-2016 data. The inclination and the tip from the data help the researcher to analyze the potency of online discussion forum in predicting students’ performance. Hence, it becomes a benchmark to find new and meaningful innovations for research, not only in education but also in all aspects of the fields. This paper also provides recommendations for students and educators to give sufficient information to preserve and ameliorate learning process by monitoring the progress of students’ performance via prediction tools using data mining. Students’ performances are mainly observed to decide the level of students’ progress to determine if a student will remain involved or quit the study. Such critical issue is obviously faced by many educational institutions. Hence, performance prediction is obviously important to be applied, not only in educational field but also the others as it avoids the students’ reduction potential in educational institutions. In addition, it also improves the students’ standard and knack through active engagement. It also helps highly-risked students to recognize the weakness of the study program.

A Case for Using Online Discussion Forums in Critical Psychological Research

Online forums provide a wealth of publicly accessible data and have proven particularly useful for critical psychologists wishing to examine naturalistic data on a wide range of social phenomena. This article begins by considering the use of online discussion forums for critical discursive psychological research and outlines ethical debates regarding their use (particularly in light of past and current British Psychological Society guidelines). To demonstrate how such data can be used in critical psychology I provide an illustrative example of a discursive analysis of a single online discussion thread taken from a diabetes newsgroup that examines anti-social online behaviours in the form of “trolling,” “flaming,” and heterosexism.

An Empirical Study of Online Discussion Forums by Library and Information Science Postgraduate Students using Technology Acceptance Model 3

E-learning is an important trend globally that is believed to enhance the acquisition of knowledge by students within and outside the classroom to improve their academic pursuit. The Online Discussion Forum (ODF) is one of the tools that are used for e-learning in Nigerian universities. It facilitates interaction among postgraduate students as they can communicate and share information sources with one another to promote learning. However, the optimum use of this forum is determined by anchor factors in TAM 3 such as computer self-efficacy, perceptions of external control, computer anxiety and computer playfulness. A conceptual model based on TAM 3 was proposed and empirically tested. Using a survey research design and an online questionnaire for 121 Library and Information Science (LIS) postgraduate students, the paper demonstrated that computer self-efficacy, perceptions of external control, computer anxiety and computer playfulness have significant influence on the use of ODF. The paper therefore proposes that Online Discussion Forums should be encouraged for learning in postgraduate education.

The Role Of Learners' Academic Background On E-Learning

Nowadays, instructional technologies are the enabler for educators to have more choices in course planning, course design, and lecturing. These technologies not only strengthen the communication between instructors and learners, but also let the learners get an easily access their course materials at anytime and from anywhere. As a result, many educational institutes, including formal universities and online educational service providers, are now using E-learning technologies to deliver their courses as pure online courses or hybrid courses. In this research, the effectiveness of using online discussion forum in teaching is evaluated based on five teaching criteria related to knowledge construction process: learner's motivation, learner's independence, learner-learner interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner's satisfaction. The author's findings indicated that IT majors are more positive towards the use of online discussion forum in E-learning.

Critical Pedagogy in Online Environments as Thirdspace: A Narrative Analysis of Voices of Candidates in Educational Preparatory Programs

Faculty members in teacher and administrator preparation programs have unprecedented opportunities to incorporate advanced technologies, including the expansion of online classes and the use of online discussion forums. Within online environments, the concepts of critical pedagogy are more connected to the landscape of digital information, providing opportunities to focus on local regimes of truth with individuals constructing new knowledge forms. Utilizing qualitative narrative analysis to examine the voices of five preservice teachers, five candidates in a beginning principal preparation program, and five doctoral educational administration candidates, this paper translates the sociological construct of Thirdspace (Soja 1996) as applied to critical pedagogy in online environments. Within Thirdspace, preservice teachers and educational leaders transform their thinking about issues that affect their lives as well as their school communities through ongoing discourse and exploration related to their own cultural backgrounds in order to promote social justice in a culturally pluralistic society.

Clustering Student Discussion Messages on Online Forumby Visualization and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization

The use of online discussion forum can effectively engage students in their studies. As the number of messages posted on the forum is increasing, it is more difficult for instructors to read and respond to them in a prompt way. In this paper, we apply non-negative matrix factorization and visualization to clustering message data, in order to provide a summary view of messages that disclose their deep semantic relationships. In particular, the NMF is able to find the underlying issues hidden in the messages about which most of the students are concerned. Visualization is employed to estimate the initial number of clusters, showing the relation communities. The experiments and comparison on a real dataset have been reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches.

Who's talking about breast cancer? Analysis of daily breast cancer posts on the internet

ObjectiveBreast cancer is the cancer most commonly searched for on the internet. Our aim was to assess daily new breast cancer related posting on the internet. MethodsWe analyzed numbers of new daily posts for common cancers for one month and subsequently analyzed content of 1426 breast cancer related posts. We also assessed use of online discussion forums for breast cancer related dialogue. ResultsBreast related topics had significantly more posts per day compared to others (mean 66.7, p < 0.01). Most posts were on media sites (65.8%). Accuracy levels were high (87.5%) but significantly lower where posted on blogs and discussion forums (p < 0.001). Anonymous posts were common (55%) and less likely to be accurate (p < 0.001). Use of discussion forums has exponentially increased over the last five years (p < 0.001). ConclusionsThe internet has become a primary forum within which health information, particularly relating to breast cancer, is both sought and shared. Increasingly information is provided by patients themselves.

Examining the role of authenticity in supporting the development of professional identity: an example from teacher education

Learning to become a professional is a complex process as students need to not only acquire the knowledge and skills for professional practice, but also new ways of defining themselves as professionals. This article considers the role authentic learning experiences play in the transition from student to professional practitioner. This transition is traced by through the concept of a professional identity. In a graduate teacher education program, the use of online discussion forum with experienced professionals to create authentic experiences is described. The Cognitive Product × Professional Focus (CPPF) model to assess the development of students’ professional identity is discussed and applied. The implications an online discussion forum with practitioners as an authentic learning experience for other professional education courses and the use of the CPPF model in assessing the development of students’ professional identity are discussed.

Online Discussion Forums

It has been suggested that interaction in online learning programmes promotes student-centred learning, encourages wider student participation, and produces more in-depth and reasoned discussions than traditional face-to-face programmes (Karayan and Crowe (1997) and Smith and Hardaker (2000) cited in Davies and Graff (2005: 1)). In this article, the participation rates and usage patterns by undergraduate political science students of online discussion forums are examined. The study is guided by a number of questions: (1) Are students willing to participate in online discussion forums? (2) Do students enjoy participating in such forums? (3) What discourages a student from participating in online discussion forums? (4) Is there a link between participation in discussion forums and grade performances in coursework? and (5) Does class size have an impact on forum participation rates? The study focuses on two groups of students studying introductory Irish politics courses in University College Cork, Ireland. The article considers student feedback on the use of online discussion forums, compares the level of participation with course grades, and finally presents an account of the author's reflections on the use of online discussion forums in teaching.

Apoyo a un «click» de ratón: los foros de Internet para problemas de salud [Support is just a mouse click away : Health-related Internet Forums

The use of online discussion forums has become popular among people with health problems. Online forums' users exchange and share personal experiences and feelings with strangers. The computer-mediated communication has special features which attract a wide variety of individuals suffering from health conditions and/or their caregivers. In addition to the 24 hour availability and the absence of barriers imposed by geographic location, research suggests special characteristics of online discussion groups such as: a better way for people to express themselves than in face to face encounters, access to a wide variety of health information, a possibility to reveal personal and private information anonymously or the therapeutic effects of writing about health problems. Although there is some scientific evidence which suggests the positive effects of internet discussion groups participation on users' well-being, more controlled studies are needed.

When groups decide to use asynchronous online discussions: collaborative learning and social presence under a voluntary participation structure

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to explore how groups decide to use asynchronous online discussion forums in a non‐mandatory setting, and, after the group decision is made, how group members use online discussion forums to complete a collaborative learning project requiring complex data gathering and research processes. While a large body of research on computer‐mediated communication (CMC) has documented successful intervention strategies to promote and sustain online discussion forums, little of the research has examined the use of online discussion forums in voluntarily contexts, wherein the decision to use online discussion forums is a personal decision and participation is not a graded component. This study approaches the research questions using a naturalistic case study of one graduate‐level blended learning course with 55 students. Employing both student interviews and content analysis methods, this study revealed that the factors affecting the group decision to use online discussion forums are (1) successful or unsuccessful experiences during the first trial, (2) perceived affordances of CMC tools, and (3) the interplay between the nature of collaborative tasks and perceived efficiency. The content analysis of online postings in two voluntary groups revealed that when groups decided to use online discussion forums, participation levels were almost equal among individual group members, and discussion threads were sustained until the final completion of the collaborative project.

E-MATHEMATICS: PRE-INSTRUCTIONAL AND SUPPLEMENT INSTRUCTION AND THEIR IMPACT OF STUDENT'S ONLINE PARTICIPATION AND FINAL EXAM SCORE

Open University Malaysia (OUM), Malaysia's first open and distance learning with over 70.000 students, offers more than 51 programs to-date. More than 90% of its students are working adults who are unable to leave their jobs or families behind to pursue their dream of getting a degree. The blended learning approach adopted by OUM provides the flexibility for working adult's to obtain the required paper qualification and to upgrade their knowledge. One of the important elements of blended learning is the use of online discussion forum where learning takes place beyond classroom. Mathematics, a traditionally difficult course, forms part of the prerequisite for students to obtain a business degree at OUM. The adult learners at OUM generally have left school for at least five years and most of them have low grades in Mathematics at O' Level. Thus it is a big challenge for these adult learners to undertake a Mathematics course via online with minimum Face-to-Face contact with their tutors. This paper focuses on the implementation of pro-instruction workshop and supplemental instruction to find its impact on student's online participation and exam results of 88 students. The contents of the online forum were also analyzed using a 34-item instrument derived from the Community of Inquiry model. Results obtained showed that there was a strong correlation between workshop participation and final exam score. Independent samples t-test conducted showed that there was a significant difference between the mean score of online discussion ratio and final examination between participants attached to a tutor conducting the workshop and extended coaching compared to participants attached to another tutor using the normal teaching guide. The means COI score obtained for mathematics between the two tutors indicated that there is a difference in the teaching and cognitive presence but almost similar in the social presence.

The Use of Online Discussion Forums for Ethics Training

The Use of Online Discussion Forums for Ethics Training