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An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses Vanessa L. Peters *, Jim Hewitt 1 Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S 1V6
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Received 19 June 2009 Received in revised form 22 September 2009 Accepted 22 September 2009 Available online xxxx Keywords: Computer-mediated communication Cooperative/collaborative learning Distance education and telelearning
a b s t r a c t This study investigated the online practices of students enrolled in graduate-level distance education courses. Using interviews and a questionnaire as data sources, the study sought to: (a) identify common practices that students adopt in asynchronous discussions, and (b) gain an understanding of why students adopt them. An analysis of the data suggests that many of the practices are coping mechanisms developed to help students more easily meet course participation requirements. Some of these are time saving strategies designed to reduce information overload (e.g., skimming messages rather than reading them carefully). Other strategies are designed to help students project an image of themselves as knowledgeable and collaborative course participants. It is argued that although these practices provide students with a level of efficiency in terms of meeting course requirements, they may inadvertently undermine learning. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Many distance education courses now include a computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) component. Students are drawn to CMC courses because they offer the flexibility of learning at times and places of their own choosing. Teachers, in turn, value the collaborative potential of CMC, including the opportunity to immerse students in class-wide investigations of course content. CMC is also thought to provide a level playing field, a democratic space where participants have equal opportunity to contribute their thoughts to the course discussion forum (Wellman & Gulia, 1999). Moreover, the shared, social nature of the environment is believed to increase personal motivation (Hammond, 1999) and foster critical reflection among participants (Hawkes & Romiszowski, 2001). For such reasons, computer conferencing is widely viewed as an educationally promising means of delivering courses at a distance. Given the rapid growth in computer-mediated distance education, it is perhaps not surprising that asynchronous discourse technologies have been a source of considerable research over the past few decades. Many studies have been concerned with factors that affect online interaction, such as course design and teacher practices (e.g., Kanuka, Rourke, & Laflamme, 2007; Liu & Lee, 2005). Other studies have analyzed qualities and characteristics related to the learner, such as learner satisfaction (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997), peer communication (Hammond, 1999; Vrasidas & McIsaac, 1999), and learner technical skills (Ross, 1996). More recently, research has explored the sociocultural dynamics (e.g., Hodgson & Reynolds, 2005; Hrastinski, 2009; Valcke & Martens, 2006), and collaborative processes (Hmelo-Silver, 2003; Luckin, 2003; Murphy, 2004) that occur in CMC settings. These and many other studies have added greatly to our knowledge of how students participate in computer-mediated conferencing courses. This study extends previous research into online practices, but does so from a new perspective. Little is known about the moment-to-moment behaviours of students as they participate in asynchronous discussions. For example, when students log onto a conference, how do they decide which messages to read? How do they decide which messages to respond to? What are their goals, and what kinds of strategies do they develop to reach those goals? In short, how do students navigate the complex world of a computer conferencing course? Implicit in the preceding questions is a recognition that not all online behaviours are necessarily of educational value. In fact, it can be argued that some practices may interfere with learning. For example, some students may develop a strategy of not reading certain messages as a time saving measure. Other students may avoid engaging in discussions that deal with difficult or unfamiliar issues. These behaviours, and the factors that give rise to them, are critically important since they potentially lessen the educational impact of online computer
* Corresponding author. Address: 6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto ON, Canada M5S 1H8. Tel.: +1 416 978 2522x6310; fax: +1 416 926 4744. E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (V.L. Peters),
[email protected] (J. Hewitt). 1 Tel.: +1 416 978 0123. 0360-1315/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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conferencing. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify common practices in discussion based computer conferencing courses, and to better understand why students adopt those practices.
2. Background Broadly speaking, there are two types of computer conferencing: asynchronous and synchronous (chat), each with its own unique discourse style (Herring, 1996). The current study reports on student practices within asynchronous computer conferencing courses. In asynchronous CMC, students interact with one another by reading and writing textual messages over a networked computer (Wu & Hiltz, 2004). Unlike face-to-face discussions or synchronous chat, the turn-taking process in asynchronous CMC is delayed, and the time between the creation of a message by the writer, and its reception by a reader, can range anywhere from several seconds to several days (Davis & Brewer, 1997). By reading messages in an electronic discussion forum and by submitting messages of their own, students can engage in online conversations with their peers. Students participate in these dialogues at times and places of their own choosing, using the online environment as a virtual meeting place for discussions that may last weeks or even months (Feenburg, 1989). The asynchronous nature of such interaction is thought to be educationally advantageous since it provides students with more time to reflect on the topic-at-hand and make more thoughtful contributions (Christopher, Thomas, & Tallent-Runnels, 2004; Jeong & Frazier, 2008). Student interaction is the cornerstone of constructivist learning theory (Roschelle, 1992; Vygotsky, 1978) and the foundation of asynchronous CMC. Indeed, many studies of collaborative and peer-directed learning have examined the educational benefits of learner-learner engagement (see King, 1992; Mugny & Doise, 1978). When students interact with each other, they often confront perspectives and views that are different from their own. Students reconcile these differences through explaining and justifying their position to their classmates, eventually arriving at a negotiated understanding of the issue or problem (King, 2002; Webb & Mastergeorge, 2003). Learning results when students evaluate and make adjustments to their own knowledge structures, causing them to develop new perspectives and extend their own limits of understanding (Bargh & Schul, 1980; Roschelle & Teasley, 1995). Student interaction in CMC settings has been the subject of much research. A number of scholars have developed constructs for investigating students’ online participation levels (e.g., Chen, 2001; Harasim, 2000; Salmon, 2000). One such construct is social presence, which is defined as ‘‘the degree of salience of another person in an interaction and the consequent salience of an interpersonal relationship” (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976, p. 65). In the context of a computer conferencing course, social presence is thus associated with people’s awareness of others in the conferencing forum, and how genuine a particular individual’s identity is perceived to be (Gunawardena, 1995). In studies of CMC courses, higher levels of social presence have been linked to increased student satisfaction (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997), meaningful learning (Rourke & Anderson, 2002) and engagement in inquiry processes (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). Aragon (2003) points out that the responsibility for creating social presence is shared by both the course instructor and the students, and recommends a number of strategies, such as the sharing of personal stories, as a way of promoting connectedness. Like social presence theory, Moore’s (1993) notion of transactional distance has also been used to measure student participation in CMC by examining the interplay between dialogue, course structure and learner autonomy. The word ‘‘distance” in this case refers not to the geographical separation between student and teacher, but to the psychological separation as experienced by the learner. Moore proposed that a larger transactional distance, characterized by rigid course structure and minimal dialogue, would result in lower levels of student involvement. In contrast, higher levels of student engagement are associated with less course structure and greater student–teacher interaction. Moore (1989) described three types of interactions where transactional distance could be studied: learner–learner interaction, learner–teacher interaction and learner–content interaction. Over the last decade, there have been a number of adaptations of transactional distance by researchers studying student participation in online courses (e.g., Harasim, 2000; Salmon, 2000; Swan, 2001). Both social presence and transactional distance focus heavily on how students perceive, and interact with, their instructor and classmates. These constructs have proven to be useful for studying collaborative processes within online environments, but they fail to explain, on a more fundamental level, what students actually do when they login to a computer conferencing course, and why they do it. The purpose of the current research is to better understand these processes.
3. Methodology This study sought to explore students’ online practices when participating in seminar-style asynchronous online discussions. Data were collected in two phases. In the first phase, a group of students were interviewed about their experiences in online courses and the practices they had developed. In the second phase, a questionnaire was used to examine the prevalence of these practices across a broader student population. Ten students participated in the interviews and 57 students completed the online questionnaire. The students who participated in the interviews were excluded from the questionnaire phase of the research. At the time of the study all students were enrolled, or had recently been enrolled, in graduate-level education courses offered at the University of Toronto. Six discussion-based CMC courses were included in the study. All of these courses were 12 weeks in duration and were delivered entirely online using the discussion forum of a web-based conferencing system. Class sizes varied from 15 to 24 students. In each course, the chief activity was participation in an asynchronous discussion forum. The courses followed a similar organizational structure. At the beginning of each week, students were presented with a set of readings and related discussion questions. Their task was to discuss issues and problems that were raised in the current week’s readings, using the discussion questions as a guide. In all courses, the instructor was an active contributor to the discussions. All computer conferencing courses in the study used threaded representations similar to the example shown in Fig. 1. In the online courses, participation was compulsory, and comprised 10–25% of the final grade. Most of the instructors provided students with both quantitative and qualitative guidelines for their participation mark (Table 1). Students were typically required to write a minimum of two or three messages per week, some of which were expected to be responses to other people’s messages. The guidelines for message quality varied from course to course, and were not always explicitly stated; however, they generally focused on the importance of contributing useful new knowledge to the class discussions and responding to others’ messages in a constructive fashion. Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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Barriers and Access #1767 by Peter on Jan 2 2009 (21:42:24) Overcoming barriers #1768 by Patricia on Jan 2 2009 (22:23:02) Make your Website accessible #1769 by Zack on Jan 2 2009 (22:33:50) Is gender a barrier? #1770 by Joan W. on Jan 2 2009 (22:37:39) Boys and computers #1771 by Geoff on Jan 2 2009 (22:38:42) Male vs. female techies #1772 by Debbie on Jan 2 2009 (22:56:49) Role model for kids #1775 by Liz on Jan 3 2009 (14:32:08) Geographically disadvantaged #1777 by Zack on Jan 3 2009 (18:56:47) Rural schooling #1778 by Mike on Jan 3 2009 (19:03:16) Fig. 1. Example of a threaded discussion.
Table 1 Course expectations for student online participation. Course ID
Percentage
Quantitative expectations
Qualitative expectations
Course 1
15
Students should write least two or three messages each week
Students should write ‘‘substantive messages” Participation will be ‘‘assessed by both the quality and quantity of your weekly contributions to the class”
Course 2
15
Students should be active in the discussions every week.
Not specified
Course 3
20
Students should login at least twice per week Students should write least one message and one response
Student messages will be evaluated with respect to their contribution to the discussion, their relevancy, depth, content, and the quality of the knowledge Personal views should be substantiated by research references
Course 4
25
Students should login at least three times per week
Students should share their responses to the guide questions for each week’s readings Students should interact with other members of the conference in a thoughtful, constructive fashion Students should consider offering perspectives that may be counter to the majority opinion Student messages should offer analysis, synthesis, or evaluation
Course 5
20
Students should write at least 3 messages per week Students should write substantive messages of 150–500 words Students should write at least two responses to other people’s messages
Students are expected to: be appropriately critical identify important issues craft useful insights integrate personal experiences provide succinct descriptions analyze abstract ideas
Course 6
10
Not specified. But student contributions should be ‘‘spread out through the discussion period rather than at the last minute”
Student message should advance the inquiry into the current topic Student messages should have a concise informative title Student messages should share knowledge, offer constructive criticism, pose a good question or build on what other’s have contributed
4. Interview findings The ten interview participants were volunteers who satisfied two criteria: (a) they were registered graduate students, and (b) they had recently participated in at least one online course. An effort was made to strike a balance between students who were new to online courses and students who considered themselves experienced. All of the interviewees were native English speakers. To encourage the students to be candid in their responses, a graduate researcher conducted the audio taped interviews. The interviewer assured the participants that their identities would remain confidential, and that their names would not be revealed to their instructor. The semi-structured interview protocol focused on students’ experiences in online courses, and the routines and practices they had developed when participating. Two major themes emerged from the analysis of the transcripts: Overload and Insecurity.
4.1. Overload One theme that immediately became apparent in the interview transcripts was ‘‘overload”. This phenomenon, which has been reported in many other studies (e.g., Gabriel, 2004; Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Wyatt, 2005), was described by participants as a feeling of being overwhelmed by the number of messages in the online discussions. According to student accounts, course discussions typically grew at a rapid rate during the week, requiring students to log in regularly to ensure that their reading load was manageable. As one student (Larry) remarked, ‘‘Some people aren’t able to connect for days at a time, and when they finally do connect, they’ve got 200 messages to read.” Not all students found the overload problem to be equally troublesome. Some individuals acknowledged the heavy load, but were able to login regularly to keep apace with developments. Others, who had more pressing home and work obligations, were more susceptible to self-reported feelings of overload. Some of these individuals had signed up for an online course hoping that participating from home would save them time. However, this was not always the case. ‘‘The online courses are frustrating in that you have the impression that they’re going to give you the added value of saving time, but in fact, you end up spending more time on them.” (Derek). Students observed that it was not just the number of messages that produced feelings of overload, but it was also the way they were organized. Jennifer remarked, Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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‘‘I was frustrated by the thousands of threads that were kind of going on.” Other students reported similar concerns, noting that a large number of threads made it difficult to synthesize the material ‘‘because there’s so much to go through, and so much to work your way though, and so much to synthesize and put into context.” (Rita). The phenomenon of overload appeared to influence how students viewed each other’s messages. For example, some participants expressed a negative opinion of what they described as ‘‘cheerleading type” messages that provide encouragement for people, but offer little in terms of substance (e.g., ‘‘I agree with you, nice work!”). Further probing suggested that students were critical of these messages because they amplified the overload problem. As one student explained, she resented ‘‘having to take the time to open a note only to have someone agreeing with the post before it.” (Elizabeth). Other participants expressed frustration with messages that were lengthy, were written in formal academic language, or were repetitious (i.e., they repeated ideas that had already been discussed). Again, these kinds of messages were viewed critically because they were thought to increase people’s sense of overload. The interview participants described a number of strategies they had developed to cope with overload: 1. Participate frequently: As one student commented, ‘‘What I do in an online course is I try to log on everyday, and that to me can be, I guess, a little bit stressful because I need to make sure that I have time everyday to do that. But in the long run, I think that I avoid feeling overwhelmed.” (Jonathan). 2. Skim messages: Instead of reading each message closely, some students reported that they would skim messages looking for items of interest. ‘‘I don’t really solidly follow everything, and I don’t read a hundred percent of everything. I will skim things just to make sure that someone hasn’t said something brilliant and I just missed it.” (Renee). Corey remarked, ‘‘A really lengthy note - I try to skim over it and try to find the key terms that are of interest to me. And then basically if I find that the note is good, I’ll read it or parts of it.” 3. Focus on a single thread: Rather than try to keep up with all the conversations, a few students reported that they limited their participation to just one or two threads of interest. In Elizabeth’s words: ‘‘I’d usually contribute to maybe one thread, so rather than trying to read all the notes and get a sense of everything that’s taking place, you take a thread and contribute. . . sometimes if it’s the end of the week and I don’t want to read all of the notes, I’ll select a thread and contribute to that.” 4. Read messages selectively: ‘‘I wouldn’t necessarily look at other people’s work. I mean I tried when I could, but there was a large volume of material, I was trying my very hardest to keep up with the course material.” (Corey). Some students favoured the messages written by certain individuals. For example, when describing the reading strategy he employed in his course, Derek said, ‘‘You kind of got a sense if George [is someone who] makes significant contributions.” Conversely, others chose the strategy of deliberately avoiding messages from authors who they considered to be poor writers. Renee observed, ‘‘I know I’m very quick to judge someone who can’t write, I’m very quick to dismiss their ideas because their writing is hard to read, and obviously grammatically incorrect or verbose.” From these responses, it appears that the phenomenon of overload affects students in several respects. First, it affects the way that students read online messages. To cope with overload, students sometimes resort to selective reading and skimming strategies. Second, it appears to affect learner perceptions. Students tend to react negatively to messages that they feel are contributing to their sense of overload, with different students reacting critically to different types of messages (e.g., cheerleading messages, lengthy messages, repetitive or verbose messages, poorly written messages). In some cases, students were not only critical of the messages, but also of the individuals who wrote them. Considered collectively, these findings suggest that overload is not simply a benign inconvenience for learners in distance education courses. On the contrary, overload appears to: (a) reduce students’ tolerance for certain types of messages (e.g., supportive, encouraging messages), (b) negatively influence students’ opinions of each other, and (c) foster reading practices that favour expeditiousness over contemplative reflection. Arguably, all of these influences could potentially work against instructor efforts to foster a collaborative online learning community. 4.2. Insecurity Insecurity was another theme suggested by the interview data. Many students reported feeling uncertain about how they were perceived by the instructor and their classmates. They also felt unsure about their progress and status in the course. This idea repeatedly emerged in the interviews: ‘‘I’ve done some things where I wasn’t sure how it was being seen by the professor. I recently did something – we had an evaluation folder set up for feedback at the end of course, and I got this great idea really late one night that it would be great to have an anonymous one where we could all just place comments anonymously, and I did it, but I didn’t check with the professor first and I made a little note saying, ‘I hope that’s okay with you’, and then I waited afterwards thinking, ‘Okay, is she mad?’ ‘What’s happening here?’ So it took a couple of days to feel secure that it was a good thing. I probably should have emailed her first, but it was the middle of the night and I just went with it.” (Linda) ‘‘I always feel threatened, always. . . you’re putting your knowledge out there for the community to look at and to construct and to reconstruct and validate, and it’s a big jump to make. Sometimes I look back at my messages and I’m like, ‘was I on track in this view [discussion]?’ And the next week we’re talking about the opposite about what I said in my message, but does that mean what the community is talking about is right?” (Rita). ‘‘I feel more uncertain in an online course. I tend to worry more about how I’m doing. . . I guess because I can’t read the facial expressions of peers and the professor. And also because if I put my hand up in a face-to-face course and I made a comment, I would get a response, and that’s not always the case in online learning. A lot of times you make postings for whatever reason and you don’t get a response from people. So, that can be a little worrisome.” (Mara). ‘‘One of my major concerns is how I’m going to be evaluated. And the reason for that – In a face-to-face setting having contact with your instructor, you can have clear judgments on how well you’re doing, and I think that a lot of that comes from being able to judge or determine how you’re perceived or how your ideas are really seen by everybody. In an online environment it’s difficult to tell if people appre-
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ciate that you’re adding something. . . and I suppose one of my worries might be that if the instructor is only reading some of the notes that are contributed, what if they pick all of your poorly constructed notes?” (Elizabeth). It was not uncommon for students to report feeling uncertain about how they were perceived in their online course. When asked to explain the source their uncertainty, students offered a number of explanations. Some alluded to the temporal and spatial distance in CMC environments, and the inability to see facial expressions or hear people’s voices (e.g., Mara’s observation, above). Others mentioned their uncertainty was heightened by situations in which they posted a message but failed to receive a response from anyone in the class. For example, Corey explained, ‘‘You might have some sort of epiphanous [sic] brave wave – you write something down and you spend the time to really sit down and write something, and the thread just hits the floor and doesn’t continue. Then you can often think, ‘Am I the only person that really cares about this or is this something that wasn’t note-worthy at all?’” Still others related their insecurity to the public and permanent nature of their online contributions: ‘‘Like we can go back to it three weeks later and reference it and say, ‘Look buddy, you are like way off track with this now that I know what I know.’” (Rita) They saw this as quite different from the ephemeral nature of face-to-face classroom discussions. It was a concern that, ‘‘the professor can go back and read and reread and reread your postings anytime.” (Linda). In all of the courses, a portion of each student’s final grade was based upon their online participation. This seemed to contribute to their feelings of insecurity. While students viewed the course conference as a place for peer interaction, they also saw it as a place where they had to perform to satisfy certain course expectations. For some, this produced a subtle sense of competition among students, since they felt their messages would be compared to those of their peers. ‘‘I mean, all the people in the courses would be fairly accomplished, and they would all be fairly academic individuals, who probably developed a pretty good sense of academic competitiveness. I think that some people are not competitive in the environment, but the majority of people do tend to kind of yardstick or measure themselves against other people’s postings and they do see that that may be the way the professor perceives them in relation to other people.” (Linda). One of the effects of this perceived competition was that students felt it was important to make a contribution to the course conference, even when they felt they had nothing of value to say. ‘‘Somebody had already contributed what I had to contribute and then I felt like, well, I could throw something in here for the sake of throwing it in, but then, why bother? But then I’m feeling like I have to throw something in because I’m being graded on this.” (Jennifer). Many of the practices that students described in their interviews were ones they developed in an effort to make a positive impression on the instructor. These include: 1. Participate early: Some students adopted the strategy of participating early in new discussions. In part, this was viewed as a positive strategy in terms of learning the material. However, students also had the sense that early contributors had an advantage in terms of producing messages that the teacher would value. They felt there were a limited number of good ideas that could be contributed to a particular discussion, and it was best to contribute as early as possible before all the good ideas were taken. For example, Mara explained: ‘‘[I] don’t ever like to miss the first couple of days of a discussion. I feel like if a course module starts on a Tuesday and you don’t log in until Thursday, then the things you want to say may have already been said.” Derek had a similar strategy: ‘‘You know, the strategy to use, and I have been successful with this, is to get the readings done ahead of time and when we’re supposed to start the discussion, kind of try to get in on the ground floor, and make some comments so that: (a) I can have some effect on the discussion, and (b) so that I’m not so late that I’m just clicking through 75 messages and making some irrelevant comment.” (Derek). 2. Try to figure out what the instructor wants to hear: As in face-to-face courses, students in online courses make an effort to understand the instructor’s perspective (Wyatt, 2005). ‘‘I know a lot of people print out the instructor’s comments if they’re participating a lot, so they’ll do a search of the instructor’s notes and they’ll have a kind of a series of notes that they’ve posted so they can see the pattern, the importance of certain ideas and things like that.” (Renee). Corey made a similar observation, ‘‘Online sometimes you feel like you’re trying to write, to tailor it to what you think people want to hear, to what your professor wants to hear.” 3. Focus on your interests: ‘‘Well yeah, I’ll read through the notes and then whatever I feel is kind of interesting or hits home, or that I have an opinion on, you kind of start to contribute to that, and that’s the way I operate.” (Corey). 4. Sound knowledgeable: Since students are judged upon their contributions to the class discussions, they naturally make an effort to sound knowledgeable: ‘‘Personally, I can bullshit with the best of them. . . if I haven’t read the readings, I can get right in there and talk and sound like I know what I’m talking about and pull on other references and make it look like I’ve really thought about it. . . in an online environment the way that you can pose notes and post notes and be involved, you can sound like you are an expert on the topic and you can sound very convincing.” (Rita). One student remarked that if she had only partially read the assigned readings for the week, she would simply focus on those few readings that she had read carefully. ‘‘If you feel you’ve read a particular paper very well, very thoroughly and you’re feeling confident about your position with that, you’re more likely to gravitate towards threads dealing with that so that you can look good in those folders [discussions] that week.” (Linda). Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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From this review, student insecurity appears to be exacerbated by course participation grades and the knowledge that the instructor will evaluate their CMC messages. For some, this produces feelings of competition and the concern that students’ online productions will ultimately be compared against their own. In response, the interview participants reported developing a variety of strategies, all of which were designed to project the image of a knowledgeable, engaged and collaborative student. These strategies include participating early in the week i.e., (before others in the class ‘‘take all the good ideas”), writing about what one already knows (i.e., safe topics), and strategically focussing on a narrow, but familiar, area of expertise. From an educational perspective, these strategies are not necessarily desirable, since they suggest students are more concerned with appearing to be knowledgeable, collaborative learners than actually learning through their collaborations.
5. Questionnaire findings The first phase of the study used interviews to identify some of the routines that students commonly employed when participating in their CMC discussions. In the second phase of the study, a questionnaire was administered in an attempt to ascertain whether the feelings of overload and insecurity were widespread, and whether the participants’ coping strategies were commonly practiced across courses. The questionnaire was published online, with all responses stored on a secure MySQL database. Students from six online courses in a graduatelevel education program were invited to participate. Fifty-seven students responded, and answered all items in the questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire suggest that information overload is a common phenomenon across courses. When responding to the open-ended question: ‘‘What do you find most frustrating about reading messages in your online course?” the most frequently cited response was ‘‘volume of messages” (Table 2), indicating that information overload is indeed a widespread concern. ‘‘Off-topic notes” was the second most frequently cited frustration, followed by notes that were considered lengthy or unclear (unclear notes were described as ones where students ‘‘do not clearly articulate their ideas” or have ‘‘rambling or inarticulate writing styles”). These views are consistent with those that were obtained in the student interviews. A related open-ended question asked students about the characteristics of a note that would decrease the likelihood of a response (Table 3). In the questionnaire, students reported being less likely to respond to messages that were long, had a confrontational or hostile tone, had a formal or academic writing style, or were uninteresting. Despite their concerns about information overload, 68.4% of the participants reported that they typically read between 81% and 100% of the messages contributed to the conference in a given week (Table 4). However, students also reported that they sometimes skimmed messages instead of reading them in depth. When asked whether they read long messages (500 words or more), over half of participants (64.9%) admitted that they were unlikely to read long messages in their entirety. In addition to skimming, students acknowledged using a number of strategies to economize their reading load. For example, 45.7% of the respondents ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement, ‘‘If a particular discussion thread does not interest me, I skip over (do not read) the remaining notes in that thread.” Authorship was another influencing factor. Approximately one quarter of the students (26.4%) reported that they avoided certain authors altogether, while others (45.6%) actively sought out notes written by specific individuals. Several note-opening practices appeared to be related. For instance, a Pearson correlation revealed that learners who skip over notes written by certain authors were also likely to skip over ones they found uninteresting (r(55) = .389, p = .003). This may indicate that some students have a practice of skipping over messages, while others have a tendency to open (and presumably read) all course messages, although not necessarily reading them closely. In their questionnaire responses, learners expressed a slight preference for a conversational, rather than academic, writing style. Of the students surveyed, 59.7% reported a preference for a ‘conversational’ or ‘somewhat conversational’ writing style, while 40.3% preferred reading notes considered ‘academic’ or ‘somewhat academic’. Several questionnaire respondents felt strongly that it was inappropriate to use an academic tone in online discussions. One student explained that she preferred contributors, ‘‘who come across as real and not just academic or stuffy”, while another wrote ‘‘some people think that because the response is in writing, it is appropriate to use formal language.” A third student commented that she avoided messages that ‘‘unnecessarily used big words, endless references, and quotes.” The questionnaire also explored students’ writing practices (Table 5). When asked how long they typically spent writing a note, approximately half of participants (45.6%) reported spending between 5 and 15 min writing a note, and almost a quarter (24.6%) reported spending between 16 and 30 min writing a note. A Pearson correlation revealed that students who spent between 5 and 15 min writing a note were also less likely to incorporate course readings in the text of their messages (r(55) = .377, p = .004).
Table 2 ‘‘What do you find most frustrating about reading messages in your online course?” Theme
Frequency
Volume of messages Off-topic notes Lengthy notes Unclear notes Notes dealing with technical issues Frequent posts early in discussion Potential for misunderstanding Sentiment conveyed in a note Lack of substance in a note Notes that are verbose Notes posted late in discussion Formal or academic writing style
20 11 8 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 1 1
Note: Students could choose more than one category.
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V.L. Peters, J. Hewitt / Computers & Education xxx (2009) xxx–xxx Table 3 ‘‘What characteristics of a note decrease the likelihood that you will respond to it?” Theme
Frequency
Note is long Confrontational or hostile tone Formal or academic writing style Uninteresting Off-topic Repeats previous material Poorly written Topic is unfamiliar Written by a certain author Lack of substance in note Note is political Note is highly theoretical Note seems intended for a specific individual
12 10 8 8 6 5 5 3 3 3 2 1 1
Note: Students could choose more than one category.
Table 4 Note-reading practices as reported by participants. Questionnaire item
Response option
f
%
‘‘I prefer reading notes with a writing style that can be characterized as:”
Conversational Somewhat conversational Somewhat academic Academic
9 25 20 3
15.8 43.9 35.1 5.2
‘‘I skip over (do not read) notes written by certain authors”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
19 17 6 13 2
33.3 29.8 10.5 22.8 3.6
‘‘I seek out (read first) notes written by certain authors”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
5 15 11 20 6
8.8 26.3 19.3 35.1 10.5
‘‘If a particular discussion thread does not interest me, I skip over (do not read) the remaining notes in that thread”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
4 19 8 19 7
7.0 33.3 14.0 33.3 12.4
‘‘In an average week, what percentage of the week’s notes do you read?”
0–20% 21–40% 41–60% 61–80% 81–100%
0 4 3 11 39
0.0 7.0 5.3 19.3 68.4
‘‘Of the notes you open, approximately what percentage of notes do you skim quickly or not read to the end?”
0–20% 21–40% 41–60% 61–80% 81–100%
26 13 9 7 2
45.6 22.8 15.8 12.3 3.5
‘‘I am less likely to read a note through to the end if it is long (500 words or more)”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
3 8 9 29 8
5.3 14.0 15.8 50.9 14.0
In their questionnaire responses, 82.5% of participants admitted feeling pressured to contribute a certain number of notes to the conference. This pressure was a result of efforts to fulfill their weekly ‘‘quota” for their course participation grade. Performance-related concerns affected other aspects of their online participation. When contributing to the discussions, 86% of learners reported that they felt pressured to make significant intellectual advances that pushed discussions to a deeper level. There was also concern about how their messages were viewed by others: 54.4% of students ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ they were sometimes worried about looking foolish when posting to the course conference. The majority of students (73.7%) also ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ feeling disappointed when they wrote a note that nobody responded to. Collectively, these findings offer support for the interview findings about ‘‘insecurity”, although the non-uniform distribution of responses on the questionnaire suggests students vary considerably in this regard. Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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Table 5 Note-writing practices as reported by participants. Questionnaire item
Response option
f
%
‘‘How much time do you generally spend writing a note?”
5–15 min 16–30 min 31–45 min 46–60 min 1 h or more
26 14 11 4 2
45.6 24.6 19.3 7.0 3.5
‘‘I feel pressured to regularly contribute a certain number of notes to the class discussions”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
1 3 6 29 18
1.8 5.2 10.5 50.9 31.6
‘‘I feel pressured to regularly make significant intellectual advances that push discussions to a deeper level”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
0 2 6 37 12
0.0 3.5 10.5 64.9 21.1
‘‘I am disappointed when I write a note that nobody responds to”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
0 9 6 29 13
0.0 15.8 10.5 50.9 22.8
‘‘I am concerned about looking foolish when posting a note”
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
6 15 5 26 5
10.5 26.3 8.8 45.6 8.8
6. Discussion It could be argued that the student routines identified in this study are reasonable, adaptive responses to conditions that develop in many online courses. Information overload is a commonly reported phenomenon, so it is perhaps not surprising that the study uncovered selective reading and skimming practices. Similarly, it is not entirely surprising that students take steps to impress their instructor by participating frequently and focussing on topics that are familiar and safe. The problem, however, is that such strategies – while perhaps efficient for meeting course requirements – may subtly undermine the teacher’s efforts to engage students in genuine, knowledge-advancing discourse. The discussion that follows explores this concern for both the ‘‘Overload” theme and the ‘‘Insecurity” theme. 6.1. Overload In both the interview and the questionnaire, students frequently expressed concerns about a lack of time and the large numbers of messages to read in their course conferences. To compensate, they often took shortcuts such as skimming messages or ignoring certain discussion threads. The data also suggests that when students read notes in a discussion forum, a more careful reading was applied to the beginning of longer notes, and less attention was applied towards the end. These findings are consistent with those reported in previous studies. For example, Hewitt, Brett, and Peters (2007) measured the rate at which students read messages when participating in online discussions, and found a significant correlation between message length and students’ tendency to scan; as messages increased in size, students spent proportionately less time reading them. Along a similar vein, in their analyses of graduate-level online conversations, Ho and Swan (2007) found that shorter messages tended to receive more responses than longer ones. They proposed that students may reject longer discussion messages in favour of simpler ones that require less time and effort when formulating a response. These studies contribute to a growing body of evidence that suggests students sometimes respond to information overload in ways that unintentionally subvert the instructors’ goals of fostering a community of scholarly exchange. If information overload only had the effect of increasing learners’ time on task, it would not necessarily be undesirable. However, this study instead suggests that students often react to information overload by developing strategies for cutting corners. They read some messages quickly, read some messages only partially, and ignore other messages altogether. Thus, their online focus becomes one of efficiently managing a large body of information rather than working in deep collaboration with classmates. Given the large number of notes that are typically contributed to a computer conference, it is understandable that learners would respond by adopting timesaving measures; however, if these kinds practices are commonplace, then students may be missing important issues and ideas. Although students’ strategies save them time, it can limit their engagement in the kind of progressive discourse that computer conferencing was intended to engender (Turns, Guzdial, Mistree, Allen, & Rosen, 1995). 6.2. Insecurity Students also developed routines that emerged, in part, out of concerns about how they were perceived by others in their course. When responding to the questionnaire, over half of the participants said they were worried about looking foolish when contributing messages. Since the instructor graded them on their online participation, it was important to write messages that projected a positive scholarly image. Some students accomplished this by writing many messages. Others felt that messages should take the form of mini academic essays. Interestingly, many of the interviewees were critical of academic-style messages. One student explained her dislike for these messages Please cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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by saying, ‘‘if [the note] has too many references I feel I have to equally research my response and I don’t have time.” Thus, student insecurity appears to be associated with a perceived sense of competition. If students are evaluated on the basis of their online contributions, it is not surprising that they have concerns about how their contributions fare in relation to others. The uncertainty expressed by the participants in this study echo those from earlier investigations into online learning environments. In a personal reflection of her experience as an online learner, Mann (2003) describes how she felt a loss of control over her presentation of self, including the identity that was conveyed to her classmates. This kind of insecurity is perpetuated when students make assumptions about the norms of behaviour in their learning environment, and refrain from contributing out of a fear of violating those norms (Mann, 2005; Read, Archer, & Leathwood, 2003). Unfortunately, students’ conceptions about behavioural norms are not always compatible with learning. For example, to make headway on an issue, it is often helpful for participants to publicly ask questions that may reveal their lack of knowledge, or offer perspectives that may later turn out to be incorrect or misguided. Similarly, it is often more educationally strategic to focus on what one doesn’t know, rather than only contribute to topics where one has some expertise. For students to make intellectual advances they must be prepared to expose their lack of knowledge when contributing their thoughts to the discussions. If they are concerned about exposing their ignorance and breaking norms, they will impede their own progress at developing knowledge about a topic (Read et al., 2003). Previous research has suggested that increased student interaction can alleviate feelings of insecurity and promote social presence in online courses (e.g., Aragon, 2003; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). At times, students’ preference for an amicable learning environment will compel them to write brief but reassuring responses (e.g., ‘‘great work!”) to their classmates’ messages (Conrad, 2005). These kinds of messages, although not germane to course topics, are important for developing an inviting and inclusive learning environment. Intriguingly, the learners in this study were often critical of reassuring messages because they added volume to an already overflowing discussion forum. In other words, although students appreciate receiving such messages, they don’t necessarily enjoy reading ones intended for their peers. Thus, it appears that a dynamic tension exists between overload and insecurity. While it may be possible to reduce student insecurity by encouraging students to write supportive messages to one another, doing so can increase the overload problem. This finding supports the observation by Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, and Archer (1999), that although social presence is important for meaningful interaction, ‘‘there is an optimal level above which too much social presence may be detrimental to learning.” (p. 67). 6.3. Promising directions The results from this study arguably call into question the value of course participation grades. While such grades encourage students to write messages, they also appear to motivate the questionable behaviours observed in this study. Specifically, they increased feelings of insecurity, promoted feelings of competition among learners, and led to a variety of overload coping strategies. Students became adept at projecting the impression that they were working collaboratively, but without necessarily engaging in genuine collaboration. Future studies may wish to explore whether the problematic behaviours can be decreased by reducing the weight of the participation grade or perhaps by eliminating it altogether. It may be productive, for example, to replace participation grades with entirely new assessment schemes that focus students’ attention on learning outcomes instead of participation metrics. While new assessment schemes offer one possible avenue of research, there is also a need to investigate, at a deeper level, how the culture of online courses can be reconceptualized. It is worth noting that the interviewed students did not view their participation strategies as problematic. In fact, they frequently used the word ‘‘collaborative” to characterize their online activities. Students appeared to equate collaboration with the process of writing responses to their classmates’ messages and extending discussion threads. This suggests a need to reinvent the culture of online courses in ways that foster more sophisticated conceptions of online collaboration. In such courses, the word ‘‘collaboration” would ideally be associated with the careful reading of other people’s work, the purposeful pursuit of shared meaning, the asking of difficult questions, ongoing assessments of what the group does not yet understand, the open acknowledgement of confusion, and efforts to make intellectual advances in areas where the group is struggling. If these kinds of practices were emphasized in CMC courses, students would be less inclined to adopt the strategies identified in this study. To help reinvent the culture of online courses, some researchers are experimenting with scaffolds for higher-level operations. Without structural guidance, students are less likely to engage in productive collaborations with their classmates (King, 2007; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Webb, Endler, & Lewis, 1986; Weinberger, Ertl, Fischer, & Mandl, 2005). A number of research projects have already focused on ways to promote more focused and substantive online discussions. One such project is SpeakEasy (Hoadley & Linn, 2000), a conferencing system that provides students with different discourse representations for asking questions and giving comments to their peers. In SpeakEasy, students have the option to contribute anonymously in a learning environment that is safe and potentially less competitive. Along similar lines, the software CaMILE, developed by Guzdial and Turns (2000), provides scaffolds by way of discussion anchors – topic starters designed to keep students on-task and encourage participation within the conferencing forum. To achieve improved student performance, other researchers have used interventions such as graphical representations (Suthers, 2003), strategic questioning (Bradley, Tom, Hayes, & Hay, 2008) and limiting group size in online discussions (Hewitt & Brett, 2008; Schellens & Valcke, 2006). The body of research on computer-mediated conferencing has contributed tremendously to our understanding of how students learn in these environments, and has informed the design of more effective online discussion forums. Orchestrating productive peer collaboration is no easy task, and instructors must take measures to ensure that the cognitive workload is distributed among learners, and that there is a shared responsibility for the task at hand (Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 2002). At a deeper level, instructors must also find ways to make their courses safe and focussed on learning so that students are not induced to adopt routines and practices that are educationally suboptimal. 7. Conclusions This study investigated the online behaviours of students enrolled in graduate-level distance education courses. Analyses of the data identified a number of practices that students routinely employ when participating in a computer conference. More often than not, these strategies were aimed at more effectively meeting course participation requirements. In light of the findings, it can be argued that students are frequently motivated to participate in ways that emphasize workflow efficiency over advancing their understandings about course topPlease cite this article in press as: Peters, V. L., & Hewitt, J. An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses. Computers & Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.030
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ics. In their interview and questionnaire responses, students did not discuss learning-related challenges, but rather focussed on the practical challenges of reading large numbers of messages and writing messages that would help them secure a good participation grade. Many of the strategies developed to accomplish these tasks (e.g., skimming or ignoring messages, writing about what you already know) arguably serve to subvert learning goals rather than support them. Collectively, the practices identified in this research suggest that students may not be fully realizing the constructivist affordances of asynchronous online discussions. To encourage students to engage in productive collaborative exchanges in a computer conference, it may be necessary to restructure the design of CMC courses and software in ways that focus students’ attention on learning outcomes rather than participation outcomes.
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