Discussion boards I had one once but noone posted

1
Discussion boards I had one once but no-one
posted

• EPS Teaching Support Development
• Lunchtime meeting 8th March 2007

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Outline of meeting

• Introduction
• Sue King - A down dirty analysis of
  discussion forum statistics
• Lesley Patterson - Developing an tool for
  in-depth discussion analysis
• Activity - Testing the tool
• Diane Slaouti - The importance of the tutors
  contribution
• Summary tips and tricks for good discussions

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Down dirty webstats

• MSc Maintenance Engineering and Asset Management
• Part-time, distance learning with 2 day
  residential each semester
• Students professional engineers in full-time
  employment, multinational group
• Most students aged 35-39, between 5 15 years
  since previous study

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Discussion design principles

• Knowledge constructed through social interaction
• Social constructivist view of education
• Communities of practice an important concept
• DefinitionGroups whose members regularly engage
  in sharing and learning, based on common
  interests Lesser, E.L. Storck, J. (2001)
• Gilly Salmons 5 stage model of e-learning

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Question

• Does participation in discussions bear any
  relationship to the students final mark for each
  course unit ?
• If yes, what type of participation is the
  indicator
• Social presence
• Cognitive presence

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(No Transcript)
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Total discussion postings per unit
Mean 184.5 postings per unit
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Correlation table
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Coding categories
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Posting types and unit marks
studentmarks
R2 52
r .83
knowledgeconstruction
course management
social interaction
r .80
r .56
n.s.
r .81
knowledgeconstruction
knowledgedevelopment
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Conclusions

• Crude method of analysisbut easy to replicate
• Social presence alone is not a predictor of
  academic success
• Likely relationship between knowledge
  development type postings and academic success
• Question what are the characteristics of
  discussion tasks where this type of interaction
  takes place most frequently?

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References

• Benjamin S. Bloom, Bertram B. Mesia, and David R.
  Krathwohl (1964). Taxonomy of Educational
  Objectives (two vols The Affective Domain The
  Cognitive Domain). New York. David McKay.Lesser,
  E.L. Storck, J. (2001) Communities of Practice
  and Organisational Performance, IBM Systems
  Journal Knowledge Management 40, 4,
• Salmon G. (2000) E-moderating the key to
  teaching and learning on-line. Kogan Page
• Wenger,E. (2002) Cultivating communities of
  practice. HBS Press

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10 tips for setting discussion topics

• Embed specific discussions into the course
• Set clear, structured exercises
• Specify number of postings expected
• Give guidelines on length of postings
• Allow reasonable time frame for responses (2
  weeks)
• Use topics where individuals can reflect on
  /share their own experience/research i.e.
  postings are unlikely to be repetitive
• Set topics where collaboration is beneficial for
  the whole group
• For group tasks, set exercises which can be
  easily broken down into smaller components
• Send reminders to non-participants
• Give positive feedback in summary