Analysis of Blog Community

Community: What and Why

Building an interactive community offers important learning benefits.  Gamson and Chickering (1991) include cooperation among students as one of the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. Likewise, social constructivist models of education emphasize the value of dialogue for learning (Ravenscroft, 2011). Community increases cognitive engagement, leads students to be more active learners, and hence, builds knowledge (Crawford & Gannon Cook, 2008; Neff & Whithaus, 2008; Warnock, 2009).  This idea was pioneered by Vygotsky who believed that social engagement was necessary for learning to take place (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978).  While this dynamic applies to any classroom, within distance education, “the survival of the course depends on interactivity” (Danowski, 2006, p. 97). 

Community provides the optimal environment for learning, but, as Brent (2004) points out, the concept defies simple definition. Nevertheless, for our purposes, Garrison & Vaughn’s (2007) Community of Inquiry concept provides a workable starting point.  Here, the idea of community “recognizes the social nature of education and the role that interaction, collaboration, and discourse play in constructing knowledge” (p. 9) while inquiry brings in the notion of constructing meaning through personal engagement.  This includes an idea of social presence where open communication occurs within cohesive groups and includes affective and personal connections. Swales (1990) focuses on the linguistic nature of these connections in his notion of discourse community, a group that is united by common goals, has mechanisms for communicating, and shares genres and vocabulary.  Within a given class, community is initiated through common experiences and furthered through shared discourse in available forums, whether part of the course design or serendipitous.  Community is never automatic, but distance education adds new challenges.  At the same time, the online affordances offer new opportunities.  Indeed, Warnock (2009) sees interactive forums as a key strength of online classes, and Ravenscroft calls networked social media “a new and profound dialogue landscape” (2011, p. 140).  Not surprisingly, then, asynchronous online discussions have become a powerful tool for many distance teachers (Warnock, 2009; Neff & Whithaus, 2008; Hew, Cheung, & Ng, 2008).  The blog community created for Online Writing Instruction is an example of this type of forum.  

Creating dialogue in the blog community

The stipulations for the assignment set the stage for interaction but did not demand it.  In Swalesian terms, the blogs offered a shared genre and disciplinary membership provided a shared language, for most participants at least.  To that degree, the blogs themselves, with no further interaction, signaled an incipient community. Yet, as Hew, Cheung & Ng note, an adequate level of participation is the lowest common denominator of successful online discussion, and Ravenscroft (2011) argues that dialogue must be generated.  Simply posting blog entries, therefore, is not enough to create a dialogic community. The comment feature, however, does allow dialogic interaction, so examining the number of comments, the number of threads, the distribution of comments across the blog space, and the level of participation can help us determine to what extent the blog space became a blog community.  

At first glance, participation appears good.  I found 77 comments spread over 56 blog entries as authored by 11 students.  In other words, each blogger received an average of 7 comments.  In reality, some bloggers had many comments while others had relatively few.  The highest had 13 and the lowest had 0, though since her blog required approval for posting comments, there may be comments waiting to be posted.  There is no obvious reason why some blogs had fewer comments, but a possible factor is the position in the blog list provided by the professor.  The two blogs with the most comments were, in fact, the top two on that list.  However, four of the 12 comments in Kristina’s, the first listed, were her responses to the comments of others.  Carol, Daniel, Shantal, and Suzanne also received an above average number of comments, revealing another factor, the development of comment threads.  These come closest to genuine dialogue and probably have a pay-off in terms of generating motivation for the further conversation, and, of course, in developing community.  However, overall, few threads developed.  The longest were a chain of six comments on Kristina’s blog, five on Suzanne’s, and four on Daniel’s.  Several instances of comment-response occurred, but most comments stood alone.  Another factor related to participation is the number of students who commented.  Seven students commented on the posts of others and one additional student responded to comments on her own blog.  Three students contributed no comments.  

Before drawing conclusions about how successful commenting was in creating a blog community, let’s look at some additional features of the comments.  Most comments developed a complete idea using a paragraph or more.  Showing interest in a topic raised by an article was the most common type of response. Stating agreement was also common and disagreement, rare, although interrogating aspects of the article or its findings was not uncommon.  There were six instances of intertextuality across the blog community, where a commenter referred to other blog entries or comments, and four make reference to course discussions or readings, thus alluding to shared experience.  Twenty-six make reference to the commenter’s own experience with the topic.  One comment does all three: “From our readings this week, as well as in some of my own research for my paper, I’m seeing more of the ‘connectivity’ discussions. As I mentioned in another of your blog articles, I’ve been inspired to try videos and audio posts this term to try it in my own classrooms…” (Carol commenting on Sarah’s first blog entry) 

The commenting function can develop dialogue and foster community in two ways, first, by creating intellectual dialogue, and second, by strengthening social bonds between group members.  While it is difficult to disentangle one from the other, certain behaviors foster each.  For example, offering extended responses with reasoning, interrogating the article on points of concern or disagreement, asking questions, and making intertextual connections to the class or across the blog community are all ways of creating intellectual dialogue.  All of these strategies were evinced in this blog community.  Showing interest in the topic of an article or affirming an author’s critique both further the dialogue while also performing a social role.  Making connections to one’s own experience provides evidence for an argument, but it also fleshes out the character of the commenter, adding to the social cohesion.  Finally, addressing the author or responder by name can play a strong role in strengthening social bonds.  This occurred frequently.  In one example, Suzanne opens a response to her blog entry with “Hi Laurie,” and, in another, Margie inserts Shantal’s name in her response: “Further, I’m also in agreement with you, Shantal, in that Yang’s essay...” These commenting behaviors fostered dialogic community but were limited by the level of participation. 

From good to better

Some adjustment of the assignment might have increased its effectiveness.  Hew, Cheung & Ng (2008) note that when an instructor requires a certain number of posts, participation does increase, but that this can reduce the quality of the discussion.  Here establishing requirements for comment posting would probably have increased comment density and generated more threads, probably without too much cost in quality.  After all, with no requirements of any kind, those who did comment took the time to provide a thoughtful response and make useful connections.  It is likely that adding some additional accountability, whether in terms of number of postings, time spent, or other strategies, would have increased the opportunity for engagement. Dividing up the class into two groups probably would also have generated denser clusters of comments and more threads. I started eager to do my part to build community, so at first, I commented on nearly everyone’s contributions.  But even in a class with just ten other students, I found myself daunted by the number of posts to read.  By the second post, I became more selective in both reading and commenting.  After the third round of postings, I neglected to return. If the class had been divided into two groups, it is likely that I would have found it easier to keep up with the postings and become a more active participant as a result.   By posting on articles connected to our research interests, the blogs gave a sense of what people were interested in, and in fact, this is the first of my PhD classes where I have had a developing sense of my classmates’ research interests.  Yet, it is possible that posting on shared rather than individual readings would have created more dialogue.  Some circumstantial evidence for this comes from a few cases where students happened to review the same article.  A good example is Jenny’s comment on Kelly’s fourth blog post: “You bring to light issues that didn't occur to me in my own summary of the article… I was particularly focused on... I really appreciate that you shed some light on...” Clearly, the shared reading deepened the engagement for Jenny and created a point of departure for discussion.

The blog contributed to creating community in the course, but other features have gone further towards developing an interactive community.  WebEx offers learners the ability to see and hear each other in synchronous discussion.  The synchronous chat on WebEx also offers a way to make connections as well as generating additional intellectual dialogue beyond the oral discussion and blog discussions.  The most effective tool for building community, though, has probably been Facebook.  The Facebook group has provided an asynchronous space for sharing resources and venting frustrations.  The synchronous chat during class time has been very effective for creating social bonds.  While this does offer an additional space for continuing intellectual dialogue, it is more often used in a personal and playful way.  It has also enjoyed a high level of participation.  No doubt the absence of the instructor imparts a particular freedom, but since WebEx chat can also be lively, I believe the short and synchronous nature of chat makes it ideal for strengthening social bonds.  However, all the forms of interaction together have built a community that offers both social cohesion and intellectual dialogue.

References

Brent, J. (2004). The desire for community: Illusion, confusion and paradox. Community Development Journal, 39(3), 213-223.  doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsh017

Chickering, A.W., & Gamson, Z.F. (1991). Applying the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.

Crawford, C. M., & Gannon Cook, R. (2008). Building autonomous and dynamic communities of learning within distance learning environments: Focusing upon making connections, knowledge creation and practice communities. The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, 4(4), 47–58.

Danowski, D. (2006). Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Leading discussions in cyberspace. In J. Alexander & M. Dickson (Eds.), Role play: distance learning and the teaching of writing, (97-108). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.  

Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. D. (2007). Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.   

Hew, K. F., Cheung, W. S., & Ng, C. S. L. (2010). Student contribution in asynchronous online discussion: A review of the research and empirical exploration. Instructional Science: an International Journal of the Learning Sciences, 38(6), 571-606.  doi: 10.1007/s11251-008-9087-0  

Neff, J. M., & Whithaus, C. (2008). Writing across distances & disciplines: Research and pedagogy in distributed learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.   

Ravenscroft, A. (2011). Dialogue and connectivism: A new approach to understanding and promoting dialogue-rich networked learning. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 12(3), 139-160.

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   

Vygotsky, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Warnock, S. (2009). Teaching writing online: How and why. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English.

TouchCast: A Review

According to a recent Washington Post article, TouchCast is the most recent milestone in the march of technology into the classroom.  In a timeline starting with Apple II in 1977 and culminating with TouchCast’s debut last year, the authors trace how computers have changed education. TouchCast shares the timeline with Texas Instrument calculators, the internet, interactive whiteboards, YouTube and distance education programs.  Does TouchCast deserve to be in this exalted company?  Will it revolutionize teaching or is it simply one of many offerings listed in iTunes or on techno-bloggers’ lists of the next new thing? 

When founders Erick Schonfeld and Edo Segal launched the iPad app in 2013, they quickly saw the educational market as a “big use case,” according TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha.  In fact, TouchCast sees itself as the leading edge of a wave that eventually will make TV as interactive as the web, a point Segal made in a CNBC interview in 2013. “We expect the consumers will be doing a lot of touching. They are expecting to touch every screen they see these days.” Since touchable interactivity will be the future of broadcasting, TouchCast is an early step in this revolution (Sorkin, 2013).

What it does

For the present, however, TouchCast is a simple tool for making video with interactive elements including embedded web content.  With a fairly simple interface and with its initial positioning as an iPad app, the software does allow less tech savvy users a quick way to produce fairly impressive content.  Genevieve Pacada, Technology Teacher Advisor at Berryessa Union Elementary, was excited about the possibilities for student digital portfolios as well as another possibility. “What if teachers used these interactive videos to do flipped learning in the classroom?”  (Pacada, 2013)  Another educator, Linda Braun from the School Library Journal, was also enthusiastic, calling it “a versatile app that produces highly engaging presentations” (Braun, 2013).    

TouchCast offers the video creation capabilities with valuable presentation capabilities for teachers, but because of the larger goals of its developers, it is largely inextricable from the TouchCast website.  This becomes obvious from the outset.  It is also annoying because the site is not at all user-friendly.  Saving, sharing and even searching the saved videos all involves hard work.  The app itself, available for iPad and Windows, is free and easy to download, but the user must register for an account, and after logging in, faces a choice between “cast side,” or video creation, and the “touch side,” where shared content is stored.

To create a video, however, the user touches the “cast side” tab and arrives at a screen with a selection of templates. Each of these has a pre-selected title and embedded sidebar, or vApp. These vApps can be a website, Google map, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or elements that one creates for insertion, such as a question, quote, list, etc.  When vApps are added to a screen, they show up as movable, resizable sidebars, manipulable before or during the recording of the video.  Besides titles and vApps, TouchCast also offers a whiteboard feature with several backgrounds, including whiteboard, chalkboard, grid, or glass, where writing or drawing appears in front of the speaker’s face. One of the more impressive features of the app is the inclusion of a teleprompter so that the video creator can speak from a script.  While recording, one can touch buttons to add and remove elements, or use a finger to move, write or otherwise manipulate elements.  After recording, the user can decide whether to save or re-record.  Nothing can be added or edited after a recording session is completed. The video is saved into TouchCast archives accessible by viewers from the “Touch side”.  All vApps have live links with which viewers can interact during playback.  

Limitations

Although the program can be fun to play with there are some significant limitations.  The most significant is the length.  Videos cannot exceed five minutes.  Furthermore, the account only allows 60 minutes of video storage.  To save videos to one’s own hard drive seems like a solution, but users complained that videos can’t be added to the iPad camera roll or computer hard drive (“Worst Reviews, 2014).  Actually, the program offers a “save as” option, but the resulting video lacks live links for interactive features (“TouchCast: Introducing”, n.d.).  Another major limitation is that there is no way to edit after recording. The viewer has to touch interface buttons to add in all the content while recording.  This was a problem mentioned by reviewers.  “It's kind of like a juggling act having to speak into the camera while pulling up various media pages onto the screen” (Pacada, 2013).    Another problem involves the difficulty of adding music.  Overall, the app is easy to use, but perhaps not immediately intuitive; both Braun and Pacada mentioned challenges with getting used to it.  Some users also mentioned problems with the app crashing or not saving (“Worst Reviews, 2014), and, in fact, I did have one brief instance of this.  The table below summarizes what the app can and cannot do.

Can do	Can’t do (at least not easily)
·         Record video from iPad camera (or webcam)	·         Edit video after recording
·         Embed web content in movable, resizable windows	·         Add background audio, like music
·         Add image files (movable, scalable)	·         Record more than 5 minutes
·         Add simple lists, interactive quizzes or questions	·         Import Power Point presentations to talk about
·         Users can interact with pull-out content during playback if within TouchCast system	·         Record in more than one session or add to existing recording
·         Upload videos to Youtube (non-interactive) or share them	·         Directly save in conventional video formatting
·         Use screen as whiteboard
·         Replace background with green screen feature (on iPad)
·         Use teleprompter to record lectures smoothly
·         Add sound effects (gimmick, mostly)

Since TouchCast is a free tool with a simple interface, it is an appealing addition to an educator’s toolkit for producing short lessons or student presentations.  I can imagine using it in several of my courses.  For example, I might use the whiteboard feature for illustrating sentence diagramming, which I use as graphic organizers for sentence analysis in my grammar and linguistics class. True, for video capture of web content, other desktop alternatives exist, such as Ezvid, Camstudio, Jing, Debut,  and Camtasia. Some, like Debut for example, combines both the capability of screen capture and recording from the web cam.  TouchCast holds the advantage, though, in mixing web content with face video, especially since all web content is interactive within the video.  Likewise, there are other iPad apps with video and whiteboard functionality, but none combines both.

Concerns

For a reflective educator, though, TouchCast touches on larger concerns. Technology is always tangled with ideology, and often students and instructors fail to notice the ways in which they are carrying these embedded assumptions into their own rhetoric (DePew).  TouchCast does imply a certain view of education.  Although an assignment like a multimodal self-introduction on TouchCast might facilitate community, generally videos only offer a tool for delivering content.  In other words, TouchCast still buys into a banking model of learning with methods that “clearly privilege the instructor’s knowledge and evaluation” (DePew & Lettner-Rust, 2009, p. 174). Although TouchCast was not developed for education per se, the developers’ commitment to education is evident.  But what is being offered is a presentational technology. Cook (2005) warned that presentational technologies discourage discussion in the classroom.  Online, these technologies deliver information, but “interruptions and questions require different delivery technology” (p. 58).  By adding in the question and the quiz VApps, the TouchCast developers may imagine that positive interruption has occurred, but in fact that is not the case.  The interruption occurs where the presenter placed it, not necessarily where the learner finds it salient or helpful, and the canned format precludes real thinking.  With only pre-selected answer choices, the interaction reinforces rather than relieves the power imbalance between presenter and user.  In fact, the video presenter may become little more than a tour guide for web content.  This places the web, too, in a position of power, particularly for a student presenter attracted to VApps that pull in web content.  It is the strongest affordance of the product, and the web is a virtual candy shop of content.  Why produce your own content when you can grab and go?  This leads to intellectual property questions.  It is easy to pull up content; it is difficult to credit it. 

The banking model of learning also privileges information over understanding, a problem exacerbated by nearly all contemporary media.  Since TouchCasts never exceed five minutes, they offer little time for developed arguments to emerge.  In this sense, it offers something of the “now…this…” problem that Neil Postman (1985) talked about in reference to television news, where serious matters are trivialized by being presented in short and disconnected segments.  Since TouchCast packages content into small bites, it may exacerbate this fragmented view of knowledge, already worsened by the click and skim of the online experience.  The software assumes an ever-shifting array of sound bites and imagery, an electronic show-and-tell with bells and whistles.  Like in the web where hyperlinks often serve to interrupt rather than extend the discourse, embedded content in a TouchCast is unlikely to lead to a deeper engagement with the topic.  Far more likely, it may simply provide a place to play by the wayside.  As Cook (2005) notes, “Transitions from one predominant learning technology to another have often accompanied and frequently required changes in learning theories, practices, and activities” (p. 54).  It may be that as more and more technology offers the possibility of dumping in content that is touchable and shifting, educators and learners may come to believe that learning demands this, that without visual action, learning does not take place.  As Nicholas Carr (2010) warns, deeper reading and reflective thinking could be a casualty.   

Some teachers see the multimodal features and simple interface of TouchCast as an opportunity for students to improve rhetorical awareness.  One education review claims that the software fosters this by stimulating students “to choose the effects wisely and only add apps and content that enhance their presentations” (“TouchCast: Cool,” 2014). Certainly, finding ways to resize a topic to fit the five-minute package could be a useful cognitive challenge.  By allowing the manipulation of familiar content such as Facebook, Google maps and Twitter feeds, the software requires students to remediate.  However, does this automatically result in rhetorical reflection?   Within composition, the appeal of digital and multimodal tools has sometimes led teachers to deemphasize writing, a danger that the CCCC committee on online writing warns against (“A Position Statement,” 2013). Reviewing a recent work on multimodal literacies, Elizabeth Wardle also addresses this concern, where some teachers see writing “as a flexible process that is always already multimodal; thus our task as teachers is to help students gain rhetorical dexterity in responding to a variety of complex, changing rhetorical situations,” while others may regard writing as “passé; the world is requiring less and less traditional textual communication; thus our task in composition classes is to engage students in entertaining or novel uses of technology and multimodality for their own sake” (p. 664).  All multimodal tools offer both rhetorical opportunity and risk.  Since TouchCast offers a quick and easy way to build a video with impressive interactivity, it will remain an appealing tool for educators. Nevertheless, educators need to be aware of the implications of its limitations, both in terms of functionality and philosophy.   

References

A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction. (2013). Conference on College Composition and Communication. Retrieved from:  http://www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/owiprinciples

Braun, L.W. (2013, November 13). SLJ reviews TouchCast video creation app for iPad. The Digital Shift. Retrieved from: http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/11/opinion/test-drive/slj-reviews-video-creation-app-touchcast-feature-rich-ipad-platform-creating-studio-quality-productions-test-drive/

Carr, N. G. (2010). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton.

Coburn, D. and Tobey, K.M. (2014, May 19). From Apple II to Touchcast, the evolution of computers in the classroom. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/05/19/from-apple-ii-to-touchcast-the-evolution-of-computers-in-the-classroom/

Cook, K.C. (2005). An argument for pedagogy-driven online education. In K.C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers. Farmingdale, NY: Baywood.

DePew, K.E. Preparing instructors and students for the rhetoricity of OWI technologies. In B.L. Hewett & K.E. DePew (Eds.), Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction. Unpublished manuscript.

DePew, K.E. & Lettner-Rust, H. (2009). Mediating power: Distance learning interfaces, classroom epistemology, and the gaze. Computers and Composition, 26(3), 174-189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.05.002

Ha, A. (2013, December 4). TouchCast brings its interactive video tools to PCs. TechCrunch. Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/04/touchcast-pcs/

Pacada, G. (2013, July 25). TouchCast: Reviews. Edshelf. Retrieved from: https://edshelf.com/tool/touchcast

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: Viking.

Sorkin, A.R. (anchor). (2013, July 9). How TouchCast plans to disrupt TV watching. Squawk Box. Retrieved from: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000181566&play=1

TouchCast: Cool tool takes videos to next level, but some privacy concerns. (2014). Graphite. Common Sense Media. Retrieved from: https://www.graphite.org/app/touchcast

TouchCast: Introducing video web. (n.d). TouchCast. Retrieved from: http://www.touchcast.com

Wardle, E. (2014). Review essay: Considering what it means to teach “composition” in the 21^st century. College Composition and Communication, 65(4), 659-671. Retrieved from: http://www.ncte.org/cccc/ccc/issues/v65-4    

Worst reviews & ratings for TouchCast. (2014, May 19). Apptweak. Retrieved from: https://www.apptweak.com/touchcast/ipad/united-states/app-store-optimization-aso/reviews-ratings/worst/all-versions/603258418#.U5mFKHJdXh5

Video review link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Oo1iu606Y 

Engagement in learning and perceptions of online discussion

Lee, S.W.Y. (2013). Investigating students' learning approaches, perceptions of online discussions, and students' online and academic performance. Computers & Education, 68, 345-352.

While asynchronous online discussions (AOD) are a key aspect of online learning, limited student participation may cause AOD to fall short of its pedagogical potential.  To deepen understanding of the factors involved, Lee designed an empirical study to look at the relationship between student learning approaches and their perceptions of the online discussions in which they are engaged.   This study from Taiwan surveyed 111 students in a blended general education ecology course, where AOD was used to reinforce concepts. Lee used two questionnaires, one to look at learning approach and motivation, and the other to examine perceptions from four angles: affective, cognitive, skill, and efficacy. In other words, she looked at emotional affect, the perceived learning value, the degree to which reading, writing, and analysis skills were perceived to improve, and finally, satisfaction with contributions. Lee also examined the corpus of responses, coding each as Initiation, Elaborated Response (ER), and Response with Resources (RWR).  Finally, Lee used statistical tests to tease out the correlations between factors.  One of her key findings was that students who identified as employing deep learning approaches and who scored higher in the four perception constructs did better in the course than those who used shallower learning approaches or those who failed to combine deep learning approaches with positive perceptions of AOD.  In other words, learners who are motivated and cognitively engaged apparently still need to have positive attitudes towards AOD for optimal performance in a course that employs it.  Another interesting finding was a strong correlation between deep learning approaches, RWR and critical thinking. That is, students with deeper motivation and deeper cognitive engagement showed the tendency to bolster arguments with resources. 

I chose this article because I hoped to compare learning strategies with cognitive engagement in an online context. However, by learning approaches Lee meant an engagement mindset rather than learning strategies.  This was important in understanding both the strengths and limitations of the article. The use of empirical data certainly was a strength. While my knowledge of statistics is thin, the study appeared carefully done.  On the other hand, the results seemed to have limited explanatory power.  Supplementing the quantitative data with qualitative data such as interviews could be valuable.  This study leaned heavily on student perceptions, but the data could only reveal correlations; it failed to capture the nuances of the students’ experience.  This also means that we know little about the specific strategies students used to deepen engagement.

The article does add to the research conversation about a vital aspect of online pedagogy. The findings suggest that instructors who highlight the pedagogical value of AOD and who encourage elaborated responses, whether initiating, elaborated or responses drawing on sources, can help students deepen their engagement, and thus, achieve better grades.  However, to be pedagogically useful, the findings need to be elaborated with further research.  For that reason, the article serves best as another piece in the research puzzle rather than as a pedagogical resource.

Effective asynchronous online discussion: What the research shows

Hew, K. F., Cheung, W. S., & Ng, C. S. L. (2010). Student contribution in asynchronous online discussion: A review of the research and empirical exploration. Instructional Science: an International Journal of the Learning Sciences, 38(6), 571-606.

This article offers a comprehensive overview of how to employ asynchronous online discussions effectively.  Hew, Cheung & Ng begin by noting that the tool has great potential but can be limited by weak participation. To address this problem, they made a lengthy but comprehensive meta-analysis of the empirical research.   They began with an extensive database search for articles. Out of an initial 860 articles, 50 involved empirical research and served as the foundation for their meta-analysis. Using a grounded approach, the authors examined each of these studies for emergent themes, eventually narrowing these down to seven categories, namely, “not seeing the need for online discussion, behavior of other participants, personality traits, keeping up with the discussion, not knowing what to contribute, lack of critical thinking skills or being content in merely answering queries, and technical aspects” (p. 573).  In the article, the authors take each factor in turn, explaining the findings from the relevant studies.  This is accompanied by a helpful table summarizing the factors and the studies.  In the next section, they return to the research for solutions for the seven factors.  Once again, the authors accompany the discussion with a table summarizing the solutions and showing which studies identified them.  The final investigation from the meta-analysis is a list of what the author call “guideline dilemmas”, or in other words, common solutions that cause a new set of problems.  There are three of these: problems with using grading to stimulation participation, problems with using posting quotas, and problems with instructor facilitation.  In the final major section of their paper, Hew, Cheung & Ng depart from the meta-analysis framework and offer their own preliminary research for a less-researched area—using students as facilitators.  They conducted two case studies.  Both used multiple data sources including questionnaires, interviews and analysis of posting threads to examine student perceptions of student facilitation.  The discussion of this research offers another rich source of data for instructors.  Since it does a good job of suggesting what factors students found motivating from the student facilitators, it can be useful whether the instructor wants to personally improve as a facilitator or teach students how to facilitate effectively.

All in all, I found this a very useful article with numerous practical suggestions for any online teachers who use asynchronous discussion.  The fact that it is undergirded by most of the research out there reassures me that the ideas have a strong empirical basis. In addition, it offers an exceptional overview of the topic. Besides the discussion, the studies are listed in an appendix chart, a reference almost as good as an annotated bibliography.  Incidentally, when I was looking for citation data, I also happened to learn that two of the three authors have since collaborated on a book, which could prove to be another helpful source:

Hew, K. F., & Cheung, W. S. (2012). Student participation in online discussions: Challenges, solutions, and future research. New York: Springer.

How instructor interaction stimulates academic engagement

Cho, M.H., & Cho, Y. J. (2014). Instructor scaffolding for interaction and students' academic engagement in online learning: Mediating role of perceived online class goal structures. The Internet and Higher Education, 21(3), 25-30.

A truism of online instruction is that students who do not perceive the instructor as accessible and committed to their learning drop out or end the semester dissatisfied.  Cho & Cho look at how instructor scaffolding works through classroom goal structures to increase academic engagement.   Academic engagement consists of emotional and behavioral engagement, or in other words, enthusiasm and interest on the one hand, and effort and involvement, on the other.  Studies have connected academic engagement to achievement, attendance and retention.  Thus, it is obviously vital in online contexts. Classroom goal structures refer to the tacit message that students infer from instructional practices and policies about the learning philosophy undergirding a course.  Mastery goal structure emphasizes mastering skills, performance-approach goal structure compares achievement and highlights superior efforts, and performance-avoidance goal structure avoids comparison between learners and masks inadequacies. 

Cho & Cho studied 158 college students recruited from ten sections of an online educational psychology course.  Instructors met in weekly meetings to brainstorm on ways to improve instructional scaffolding strategies, such as weekly emails with announcements and general feedback and personalized feedback through email or gradebook comments.  Instructors also pushed themselves to log in five or more times a week and respond to at least 20% of student posts.  Students were surveyed twice, on the 8th and 12th weeks of a 16-week semester, to explore how instructors scaffolded for interaction, the goal structures that students perceived, and the engagement versus disaffection in both behavioral and emotional categories.  The instructor interaction data was collected a few weeks earlier than the other data since the assumption was that students’ perception of this interaction drove the other constructs.

Cho & Cho hypothesized that scaffolding for interaction would correlate with student perception of classroom goal structure and that this, in turn, would correlate with emotional and behavioral engagement.  These expectations were borne out in the findings. Performance-avoidance goal structure correlated negatively. Mastery goal structure had positive effects on both emotional and behavioral engagement, while performance approach goal structure had a positive effect on behavioral engagement but showed no significant association with emotional. “This implies that students who perceive their online class as being mastery-oriented tend to work hard and experience enjoyment, but those who perceive their online class as being performance-approach oriented tend to work hard, but not necessarily enjoy their work” (p. 29).   

Overall, I found this study helpful. I’m sure we knew intuitively that frequent interaction plays an important role in online learning and satisfaction, but this study explains what factors interact to create that reality, particularly the mediating role of class goal structures.  However, I was a little disappointed in the types of interaction attested in the study.   This study primarily looked at learner-instructor interaction while I expected to see strategies for engaging students and stimulating them to interact with each other.  In the discussion section, the researchers made several recommendations about how online instructors can act as moderators and facilitators of learner-learner interaction, but the course examples showed little evidence of this.  Of course, the instructors’ scaffolding strategies were not under the control of the researchers.

Although not specifically focused on writing instruction, Cho & Cho’s study should be relevant to anyone offering a distance class.  True, the actual behaviors modeled by the participating instructors were not that different from what most of us already push ourselves to do, but it is good to have a handle on the theory behind what we do, and the authors do offer some practical tips in the discussion section.