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Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results

Palmer, Stuart, Holt, Dale and Bray, Sharyn 2008, Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results, British journal of educational technology, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 847-858.

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Title Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results
Author(s) Palmer, Stuart
Holt, Dale
Bray, Sharyn
Journal name British journal of educational technology
Volume number 39
Issue number 5
Start page 847
End page 858
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell
Place of publication Oxford, England
Publication date 2008-09
ISSN 0007-1013
1467-8535
Summary While there is agreement that participation in online asynchronous discussions can enhance student learning, it has also been identified that there is a need to investigate the impact of participation in online discussions on student course performance. This paper presents a case study based on an undergraduate engineering management unit employing a formally assessed online discussion area. It was observed that while many students read a significant number of discussion postings, generally, the posting of new and reply messages occurred at the minimum level required to qualify for the assignment marks. Based on correlation and multiple regression analysis, it was observed that two variables were significantly related to a student's final unit mark—prior academic ability and the number of new postings made to the online discussion. Each new posting contributed three times as much to the final unit mark as its nominal assessment value, suggesting that the work in preparing their new discussion postings assisted students in the completion of a range of assessable tasks for the unit. The number of postings read was not significantly correlated with the final unit mark, suggesting that passive lurking in this online discussion did not significantly contribute to student learning outcomes.
Notes Published Online: 25 Oct 2007
Language eng
Field of Research 130306 Educational Technology and Computing
HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
Copyright notice ©2007 The Authors and British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (journal compilation)
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30017812

Document type: Journal Article
Collections: Institute of Teaching and Learning
Higher Education Research Group
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