Graduate Students’ Antecedents to Meaningful and Constructive Discussions: Developing Potential Collaborative Online Interactions

Abstract

The study analyzes evidence of how online graduate students perceive antecedents to productive online discussion posts and exchanges. It seeks to document how graduate students perceive good and bad discussions (both face-to-face and online). Through descriptive qualitative analysis we consider how graduate students describe online productive social interactions. Graduate student data provide potential elements and Brules^for discussion posts and group work that promote higher-order cognitive skills. As one graduate student succinctly offered, BI enjoyed reading my classmates' lists, especially because it was so informative to learn what characteristics my classmates find most important in regards to discussions. This information will help me in how I approach our group work and discussion throughout this class. I was happy for the opportunity to use everyone's wonderful posts in order to expand, elaborate, and clarify my own thoughts.K eywords Collaborative learning . Cooperative learning . Social presence . Online learning

Puzzling Hybrid, Hybrid Puzzling

“…My colleague and I are beginning to examine how students bring their wealth of experiences to an online course and how to promote discussion of background and course content (Kleinsasser & Hong, 2017); our attention to student interactions concerning their background and interests are also starting points for understanding potential hybrid interactions (Kleinsasser & Hong, 2016). Castno-Munoz, Duart, & Sancho-Vinuesa (2014) suggest "increasing the time spent studying online is only useful when it takes place as some form of interactive learning" (p. 157).…”