The use of online discussion forum is slowly penetrating into classroom teaching and learning as studies have proven that it contributes to a positive learning environment, provided that learners and educators know how to use it effectively. In order to know how to use the online discussion forum effectively, this study was conducted. The research objective was to identify the online discussion strategies employed by the participants. This case study involved fifteen 2 nd semester Engineering Technology Malaysian undergraduates enrolled in "Professional English 1" course. Data were gathered from a focus group interview, individual interview and participants' reflective notes. Five participants volunteered to be interviewed individually and the remainder express their interest to be interviewed in a focus group interview. The participants were interviewed immediately after their online discussion activities. The participants were also asked to reflect to their opinions on their online discussion experience after each online discussion activities. These findings indicate that participants employed three online discussion strategies to facilitate their project work, namely: 1) devising and coordinating ideas before posting 2) interpreting others' responses before posting their ideas online, and 3) ratifying their own statements before posting. These strategies were employed by the participants to complete a proposal for a Community Service Responsibility (CSR) project. It is hoped that these findings could provide insights and create awareness among the lecturers on the strategies employed by the participants so that more effective and meaningful online discussions could be carried out.
This study involved distance learners who enrolled as part time students with the Allied Sciences Faculty, National University of Malaysia. Most of these students are adult learners who possess a Diploma in Health Sciences and are attached to various health institutions throughout Malaysia. These students had to take a preparatory reading course during their first year to facilitate reading health-related references which are written in English. In this course, the course designers assigned two assignments which the students needed to complete through the online forum discussion. The main aim of these assignments was to assist them in developing comprehension of the two units in the course materials which were in the form of hypermedia documents. Besides the given course materials, they were also encouraged to do further reading from the prescribed websites and other relevant sources related to the themes of the two units. Due to limited contact hours face-to-face, online forum is considered an important medium of communication particularly for distance learners who have little opportunity to attend face-to-face tutorials and discussions. Hence, this study was embarked on in order to find out the benefits of the online forum as a communication platform to enhance the students' reading comprehension of health sciences materials. This study adopts the qualitative approach whereby distance learners were interviewed to collect data. They were also given a questionnaire to corroborate the data from the interviews. The online forum threaded discussions of a set of class of 22 students were also analyzed. The results of this study prove that online forums do enhance the students' reading comprehension.
At higher education institutions, hybrid learning that incorporates digital classroom and online teaching and learning activities are becoming increasingly popular norms. Throughout the academia, the usage of online discussion forums is progressively making its way into language classroom as studies have shown that it contributes to a good learning environment if efficiently used by both learners and educators. This qualitative study investigated strategies used by undergraduates as purposive samples in planning and executing ideas for a project via online discussion mode. This simple case study involved 15 second semester undergraduates taking “Professional English 1” course in Bachelor in Engineering Technology program. A focus group interview and follow-up individual interviews were used to elicit information from the undergraduates. All these were also triangulated with document analysis of their reflective notes and drafts of writing works. Several questions were asked to the undergraduates during both interviews to determine their strategies when discussing online. The findings indicate that participants have tremendously benefited from online discussions and have employed three main strategies namely 1) asking for clarification, 2) going over previous responses and 3) using free online services and websites. This study provides useful insight and increases awareness among lecturers on the online discussion strategies used by students, allowing for more successful and meaningful planning of tasks involving online discussion.
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