Ideas for Research Criteria

1. Course design:

• How was the course designed? what impact did that appear to have on the way in which the online discussions occured (perhaps this is to subjectives, maybe a better quesiton: What course design components seemed to be geared towards building a sense of community, building a community of practice, encouraging coherence, facilitating the negogiation of agreement/disaggreement amongst participants and the achieving of collective understanding?

I think it would be valuable to define components of the course design and the intential strategies Rick used in designing the discussion. I'm not sure if there is a official research approach to this, e.g. we analyze for ourselves and then ask him directly about his rationale, or whether this is not allowed?? (roberta)

More on course design...

From:If You Build It, They Will Come: Building Learning Communities Through Threaded Discussions (from Vicki's list)http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html

"Additional building blocks that need to be placed in order to move construction forward involve reflection upon how to design a threaded discussion so that it can be a positive learning experience for students. The wording of the topic question, the responses posted to students, the redirection as needed and the offering of encouragement to motivate students to explore additional content areas are considerations that a facilitator must embrace if the threaded discussion is to be a meaningful, learner-centered activity.

• Does the topic question provide a sound base from which discussion can be built?
• Does the topic question relate to the module objective?
• How often do I plan to interact to determine the discussion’s direction?
• What "style" of management will I use to insure the discussion is moving in the right direction? "

I think these are interesting questions for us becuase in our class students developed the questions. A couple of ideas popped up for me from this quote:

1. We should also analyze Rick's participation as the instructor in the course becuase his design decisions, particpation, approach to partication would like have influenced many of the aspects of the student interaction...the articles I've gone through so far from the online articles and notes that you both have but up suggest a different way of looking at things - more from the perspective of the impact of course design on learning, vs. analyzing the interaction between students in a more isolated way, e.g. what are the students doing vs what are the students doing and the instructor doing and the course design "doing" that influence the "criteria" we have have been talking about - building community, community of practices, etc
2. Do we need to assess the questions in the chapters we are focusing on, perhaps using the above questions Edlestein and Edwards propose above, as potential mitigating factors or additional influences?? (I'm not really sure how to describe it).

Comments

• It seems like a number of the online articles that have been posted and that you have posted notes about discuss the assessment of online discussion within the course by the instructor. Did either of you have any ideas on this applies to the research criteria? At first I thought for example, the rubrics were from studies of the interactions in online discussions - I was a bit confused!- but I think I see where they are going. Perhaps one of the things we can ask Rick about is the type of rubric, if any , that he used to assess participants in the discussion. I may be interesting to explore if there is a relationship between how instructors assess student participation and what they assess students on with nature of the discussion overall - e.g. sense of community, coherence, shared understanding, safe enviornment, etc. Perhahps though this is more of an idea for a study, vs. collection/analysis like we are doing. However, one of the things we may want to consider is articulating what if any assessment strategies and tools Rick used in the course to leave the door open for the above exploration. (roberta)

My goals for the discussion were primarily to ensure that the process of sharing and elaborating on the readings and course content occured. To that end, I looked for good questions and follow up posts from the leaders, and regular and thoughtful responses from the rest of the class. I structured the class, as you know, so that discussion was worth 40% of the grade, and required minimal posts to ensure that things got started. I also participated much more in the beginning than later, as is consistent with models of online discussion. One book we should look at in this regard is Conrad, R. M., & Donaldson, J. A. (2004). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative instruction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. There is a table in there that describes how the role of the instructor changes. I did not follow this, per se, but it does reflect my general approach, and might help to quantify this aspect. (Van Eck)