Journal article
Is lurking working? The role of non-assessed discussion boards in an online enabling program literacies subject
Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, Vol.3(2), pp.158-175
2021
Metrics
38 Record Views
Abstract
Students' engagement online is not always visible. This presents challenges for assessing learning in an informal and formative way, and for clarifying expectations and understandings prior to assessment submission. Such challenges informed this small exploratory research project which aimed to analyse students' online behaviour and seek students' perspectives of their engagement in online learning activities in a tertiary enabling program. In the academic literacies subject analysed in this project, online discussion boards host the dialogues and weekly tutorial activities that on campus students participate in within their physical classroom environment. However, student participation in these discussion boards is low and wanes further over the academic session. Given the low participation, online students' use of the discussion boards was analysed to determine whether the functionality was perceived as valuable from students' perspectives. Student's use of the non-assessed discussion boards was then correlated with final grades to determine whether posting, replying to messages, and viewing forums, supported students' learning as reflected in their grades. This research found a high correlation between students posting and reading posts, with students' final grades. Whilst not all students were visible on the discussion boards, this did not devalue the pedagogical role of this learning site functionality from students' perspectives. What may be described as legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) or lurking (Beaudoin, 2002; Taylor, 2002) was perceived by some students as beneficial.
Details
- Title
- Is lurking working? The role of non-assessed discussion boards in an online enabling program literacies subject
- Creators
- Julia Doyle (Author) - University of Southern QueenslandJohanna Elizabeth Nieuwoudt (Author) - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, Vol.3(2), pp.158-175
- Identifiers
- 991012914399402368
- Academic Unit
- SCU College
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article