Reading 12 Theme 5

Reading 12
Second reading on Theme 5 : Online Communication

Mazzolini, M & Maddison, S. (2004).When to jump in: The role of the instructor in online discussion forums. Computers & Education 49 (2007) 193-213. Downloaded on 1 August 2008 from Science Direct

Background: This article is a report on research on 40,000 postings to nearly 400 discussion forums. It was a follow-up to earlier (and smaller) research as published: Mazzolini, M & Maddison, S. (2002) Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums. Computers & Education 40 (2003) 237-253.

Context: asynchronous forums used for tutorial-type teaching purposes and form part of the assessment mix in Swinburne Astronomy Online (fully online postgraduate courses at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.)

The authors investigated how instructor participation rates, the timing of instructor postings and the nature of their postings relate to student participation and perception.

The central issues are highlighted by citing Paloff & Pratt (2001) that “the instructor needs to maintain a balance between too little and too much participation”. The instructor should determine the appropriate time to jump in, make a comment, ask another question, or redirect the discussion. Too much participation by the instructor can reduce the amount of interaction among the students and create an unnecessary degree of reliance on the teacher.

It was found that the volume of student and instructor postings in forums did not necessarily indicate how well the forums were going.

• on average, instructors who played a prominent part in forum discussions or who were active in making significant numbers of initial postings did not appear to stimulate more discussion, and may possibly have even limited the amount of discussion (with the more advanced students) and the lengths of discussion threads (with all students). The more instructors posted, the less frequently students posted and the shorter were the discussion threads. Instructors who attempted to increase the amount of discussion in forums by initiating new postings did not succeed. This differed from instructors’ perceptions - most felt that higher frequency of instructor postings either did not affect or increased the \level of student discussion.
• Even if, in the process, their own contributions to the discussions tend to decrease, students perceived instructors who posted often as enthusiastic and displaying greater expertise
• No correlation with whether the bulk of instructors’ postings are made during or at the end of the discussion period. The rearchers speculate that students will still wait to hear what an instructor has to say at the end rather than continuing to debate an issue at length, once they have determined an instructor’s practice of “wrapping up” at the end of a forum.
• Student responses suggest a preference for discussions with initial and follow-up questions, no unanswered questions at the end and a statement of the instructor’s own opinion.

QUESTIONS, DISCUSSION & REFLECTION

This research suggested a reliance on the instructor’s final words in a discussion. I would suggest that two other factors could influence this – the nature of the subject material (this issue is also raised by Wallace (2003) and the age or level of expertise of the student. Perhaps even a gender variance could be considered. Further to this - would it be preferable to resolve an issue entirely or to leave a few threads hanging for students own reflection and resolution?
This research did not investigate the impact of student-student dialogue as opposed to student-instructor dialogue in the active learning process. While the research seems to confirm Moore’s theory of transactional distance (Wallace, 2003, p. 244), Jon Dron’s theory of transactional control (Dron 2006, 2007) possibly explains the tendency for students to rely on the ‘wrapping-up” process by the instructor – whereby the less knowledgeable learner chooses to delegate control to the knowledgeable instructor. It seems to me that the theories of transactional distance and transactional control working together together could account for the findings in this research.

References:
Thanks to Leah Dewijze for the class discussion reference to idolresources.com which led me to the following articles.

Dron, J. (2006). Social software and the emergence of Control. downloaded on 2 August 2008 from http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/staff/jd 29/papers/icalt 2006.doc

Moore, M. Theory of transactional distance. Keegan, D, ed. Theoretical Principles of Distance education (1997), Routledge, pp.22-38. downloaded on 2 August 2008 from http://www.tamu.edu

And from the E-learning course booklet:
Dron, J. (2007). From transactional distance to transactional control. In Control and constraint in e-learning. Choosing when to choose. pp. 18 - 39. Hershey, PA: Idea group.

Wallace, R.M. (2003). Online learning in higher education: a review of research on interactions among teachers and students (Online version). Education, Communication & Information, 3(2), 241-280.