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1.
Introduction
e-Learning is
rapidly becoming mainstream in higher education. Computer-mediated
communication is a key element of e-Learning systems and strategies.
Online discussions are one of the most important applications of
computer-mediated communication in e-Learning environments (Kearsley
2000). They provide an asynchronous collaborative learning environment
where interaction takes place between group members (Dillenbourg 1999)
and have been included in almost all courses or learning management
systems.
Online
discussions offer a number of potential benefits that can help engage
students in activities that contribute to their intellectual growth (MacKnight
2000). For example, composing a response in online discussions often
requires greater reflection than in face-to-face discussions (Harasim
1995). Other benefits include promotion of team building, promotion of
critical thinking (Muilenburg & Berge 2002) and support for
collaborative work (Salter 2000).
The facilitator
may actively control the discussion through means such as selectively
releasing responses, limiting who can view them or by active
participation in the forum. On the other hand, the facilitator may take
a more hands off approach and leave the students to themselves after
posting a question or task. Unfortunately, simply asking students to
respond to an instructor’s given topic or question is not likely to
generate an effective collaborative learning environment. It may help
students to interact with information but not with the instructor or
other students.
This paper will
examine some of the problems associated with current discussion models
and then propose a model that aims to encourage greater collaboration
and makes it easier to structure, manage and assess online discussion
activities.
2.
Limitations in existing online forum models
There are only a
few models for online discussions with limited variation. The discussion
area provides a platform where participants can share ideas by posting a
message to initiate a discussion or to respond to already posted
questions or messages of ongoing discussion. One variation is whether
the messages can be viewed in a linear or threaded fashion.
In a learning
environment, the facilitator that moderates the process may be a tutor,
instructor or teacher. The facilitator explains the purpose and sets up
the protocols such as discussion cycle, duration and assessment weight.
The facilitator often starts the discussion by posting a question.
Students answer the question in the form of a discussion posting and may
be required to comment on other responders posting as well (Rossman
1999, Laurillard 2002).
The following
problems can be associated with such model(s).
2.1
Open-ended discussion topics
Open-ended
discussions may result in non-productive learning activity. Students are
likely to lose interest where there is an overload of information that
doesn’t have direct application or use (Harasim 1995).
If there is
assessment associated with the discussion question students may be
tempted to copy text from different sources to perform the activity
rather than engage with the question. This does not help students to
enhance their analytical and critical thinking. At the same time long
unstructured responses can result in a greater information burden for
other responders.
2.2 Low
participation or problem of “lurking”
Lurking is
another big problem that is often a lack of participation by students
particularly where it is a new communication medium (Harasim 1995).
Another common observation is that active students take an interest in
discussion based learning whereas passive students tend to find it less
attractive. This may be because it is a text-based, self-initiated
learning environment.
Research proposes
a number of strategies to hold students interest and to enhance their
critical thinking (Muilenburg & Berge 2002) but current technologies and
models do not necessarily support them. Students become confused or lose
their interest when a discussion is ill-structured or there is no
process designed to enhance their critical thinking (MacKnight 2000).
Low participation
in discussion forums may also be linked with students’ own learning
styles. Some students strongly believe in individual learning. In that
case, the existing discussion forum model, based on a collaborative
approach, may not be appropriate. (Sae-Chin & Resta 2003).
2.3
Ill-described discussions
Students find it
hard to initiate their response to them where the task is not well
described. In contrast, it has been observed that students find those
learning activities more interesting where the task is specifically well
defined and easier to follow (Muilenburg & Berge 2002). Similarly, the
job of assessing the student responses is more time consuming and
subjective when the task is not well defined (Burford & Cooper 2003).
2.4
Discussion management
Current
discussion models do not include many management features that can
assist in an educational setting. Features useful in educational
settings include access control, discussion availability duration,
assessment weight, and archive options.
For example, a
facilitator may want to release discussion responses only after he or
she has added feedback and the last student has responded. After this
the activity may continue where the students are required to compare
their responses. This can be a difficult process with current available
software and tools. Typically there are no start or stop controls
available and the facilitator does this by informing the students or
closing the discussion topic manually. The H20 project (H2OProject 2003)
allows facilitators to set some deadlines for submission of posting but
it does not have the other features discussed in this paper. It is
freely available at
http://h2o.law.harvard.edu.
2.5
Discussion assessment
A continuing
research problem is how to assess discussion contributions (Mochizuki et
al 2003). Assessment was not included in most of earlier discussion
models. Typically, they have been used to share ideas and helping out
each other. Many were not formally linked to learning activities,
outcomes and finally to assessment. However, messages in discussion
forums can be useful for assessing collaborative learning (Mochizuki et
at 2003).
Assessing a
contributor is very hard and time consuming (Laurillard 2002) as there
are few techniques available. A common one is to count the number of
postings (Salter 2000). This strictly quantitative approach does not
necessarily correlate with learning or effort. Indeed, it may encourage
students to simply post frequent and/or large messages but without
making a serious attempt.
In fully online
courses, the volume of posting may be huge to read and assess. In this
case assessment may be done by the contributors themselves or by peers.
The ‘Peer and Self Assessment System (PSAS), suggests ways in which this
might be done (Resta 2003) see
http://dl.aace.org/14156. However, this kind of system may have some
problems such as it can be biased, time consuming and difficult to
integrate into the main assessment system. Peer grading can provide
strong motivation to do quality work, but students are often
uncomfortable grading one another (Salter, 2000). A simple rating system
(eg. excellent, good, fair, poor) can be used or students may be
required to make only positive critiques (leaving the negative comments
to the instructor).
Another
assessment technique is text mining (Fujitani & et al 2003). However
this example is used for self assessment and only to see over-all
discussion patterns but it is not linked to actual student assessment.
Other assessment methods are provided in Salter (2000). However,
whichever technique is chosen, greater management by the discussion
model can make marking easier, particularly given the volume of
responses generated by most discussions.
3.
Template based discussion system
The structure of
online discussions is an important aspect involved with encouraging
collaborative learning. It requires planning and management (Mason 1998,
Laurillard 2002). To assist in this the following web-based online
discussion model (Figure 1) is proposed.
Figure 1:
Proposed online discussion model
3.1
System: Actors & components
1.
Facilitator: the instructor or moderator who controls the online
discussion as controller.
2.
Responders: students who responds to facilitator’s question/task or
other students’ postings.
3.
Discussion Template: discussion questions and stored settings from the
control panel.
4.
Control Panel: allows the facilitator to configure each discussion.
5.
Discussion Forum: a password protected web interface where responders
post their messages. On submission each message is automatically saved.
6.
Assessment: allows the facilitator to access different responses and
mark them.
3.2
Process
Figure 2:
Application homepage
A facilitator
starts the activity by either creating or choosing an online discussion
template stored in the Discussion Model Templates database.
Figure 3:
Discussion template builder
The Discussion
Template Building environment allows the facilitator to specify the
elements required for a particular online discussion and then save it as
an online discussion template.
Figure 4:
Discussion control panel
The control panel
component allows the facilitator to set parameters for the discussion
such as release and finish time, anonymity, assessment weight,
public/private, attachment options, archive options and whether the
discussion is threaded or unthreaded.
Figure 5:
Discussion forum for students
Responses in the
forum follow the structure set by the facilitator.
Figure 6:
Discussion assessment panel
If there is an
assessment weighting associated with that particular discussion activity
the facilitator is able to grade the response.
If requested the
discussion will automatically be saved in the Discussion Archive.
For example,
suppose a lecturer wants the students to explore some free web resources
available for automatic website testing. The work needs to meet a
deadline and will be marked. The postings should be available to other
students to avoid repetition of the same testing tools. Finally, the
work will be reused in another activity where students will rate and
categorise the web site testing tools listed.
Using existing
discussion models, the lecturer would have to put in considerable effort
moderating the discussion to check the deadline, manually marking the
students’ postings and creating a usable discussion archive at the end.
Using the
proposed system (Discussion Corner) a template is created:
Web Site Testing
Tool
§ Name:
(mandatory)
§ URL :
(mandatory)
§
Features: [maximum 250 words] (mandatory)
§
Comments
After that, other
options are set using the Control Panel:
§
Archive: Yes (the work will be re-used)
§
Selective Release to: None (discussion is for whole class)
§
Available Date: 30-11-03 12:00 (when student can see it)
§ Due
Date: 07-12-03 00:00 (student submission date)
§
Release Date: 07-12-03 (student only can see others' posting after
release date, as the lecturer does not want students to see others
postings before this.)
§
Anonymous: No (Students posting will be personalised)
§
Comments: Allowed (After release date students can annotate comments to
others postings)
§
Threaded: No (Students can not respond to students postings, as this is
not on-going threaded discussion)
4.
Expected benefits
The proposed
system should provide the following benefits -
4.1
Structured discussion objectives
In online
discussions, the nature and structure of discussion questions is very
important (Muilenburg & Berge 2002). The proposed model will help
enforce this by providing a template-building environment for the
facilitator. Rather than settle for questions that concentrate on recall
(eg. give a definition of X?), more creative examples can be built into
the templates. These might include -
§ Rating
alternative information sources
§
Evaluating a list of alternatives based on multiple criteria.
§
Electronic Brainstorming for a specific question or issue. (Salter,
2002)
§ Group
outlining to generate or group ideas into a familiar hierarchical
structure. (GroupSystems.com, 2002)
§
Providing an annotated bibliography
§ Voting
and survey questions
In particular,
this will assist those teachers who are new to online discussions to set
meaningful discussion questions that encourage evaluation and/or deep
learning.
4.2
Students’ interest and reusability of their work
Specific and
well-structured discussions questions are more likely to hold students’
interest especially when there is some assessment weighting attached to
it. Student work is not necessarily discarded when the semester is over.
With permission, this work can be analysed or built upon by students in
future semesters. By supplying samples of good quality previous work the
authors have noted anecdotally that the standard for subsequent
semesters continues to increase. In other cases, students have analysed
the previous work in a new manner. For example, student ratings on an
issue from a previous discussion can be collated and graphed.
4.3 Well
managed discussions
Discussion
management is a challenging aspect of online discussions, especially in
an educational environment (Burford & Cooper, 2003). It is also a very
time consuming job (Laurillard, 2002). For example, without a set ending
date, discussions can be viewed as ‘never-ending’ and the purpose can be
lost. Having set opening and closing times for a discussion helps avoid
information overload and keeps students focused on the task (Salter,
2000). The proposed system allows the facilitator to have much more
control over the management of the discussion.
4.4
Assessment
Assessment in
discussion forums is gaining importance (Mochizuki, 2003). In
educational environments, assessment is linked to learning outcomes
which in turn are linked to learning activities (Burford & Cooper,
2003). The proposed system assists teachers if they want to include
assessment weightings and provides a facility for marking. Rather than
simply using a quantitative system for marking (eg. number of posts) a
more qualitative approach can be taken. For example, students may have
to submit a draft version for others to critique before producing a
final version (Salter, 2000). Using the system both the final version
and the critiques could easily be marked.
5.
Future research
This paper
focuses on a work in progress. The real test will come when the proposed
model is applied in a higher education environment. Using an action
research model, the following questions will be answered -
§ Do
students find the forum easier to use and follow? Does it support and
enhance their level of collaboration? Does it improve the quality of
their work?
§ Do
staff prefer the forum to create and manage online discussions? Does it
minimize their effort in managing online discussions?
§ Is
reusability of discussion templates good idea in practical sense? Will
it save time and effort?
§ What
is the best framework to reuse the outcomes of students’ postings?
6.
Conclusion
There are some
problems associated with the current models of online discussions in
higher education. Discussions can end up as an open-ended,
non-productive learning activity, there may be a lack of students’
participation, discussions may not be well structured or easy to
initiate and assess by staff. The proposed system has been designed to
help overcome these problems. This may lead to better outcomes for both
students and staff. These expectations are going to be tested through
action research where the proposed system will be tested by faculty and
students.
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