Quasi-synchronous discussions: A proposal to measure the effect of Teams on cooperation, belonging, emotion and interactions

Abstract

As students begin to reconnect after the COVID-19 pandemic, changing student expectations around online engagement seem to be suggesting that new approaches should be adopted. Recent research has found that students who engaged with each other in a discussion task in a synchronous mode were more willing to work together, felt more positive and more like they belonged than students in an asynchronous mode. We wish to extend these findings by investigating whether Microsoft Teams promotes a quasi-synchronous mode of discussion and has a similar beneficial effect. The proposed study adopts a mixed-methods approach of quasi-experimental design to address this question. Students will be randomly assigned to groups of five and provided with online forums (control) then re-form and use Teams (experimental) for a discussion task. Data will be collected through survey, digital artefacts and interviews. We aim to contribute robust, empirical evidence on the effects of Teams on student engagement, which will be of interest to educational leaders and teachers.

Perspective Chapter: The Learning Management System of 2028 and How We Start Planning for This Now

“…Notwithstanding, some people still use it in this way, even though the LMS has evolved significantly, largely due to what was discussed in the previous paragraph and the affordances that this has allowed through the linking to more interactive tools. What this new functionality has enabled is for teachers to engage students with far more participatory work, through just-intime, synchronous and quasi-synchronous interactions [8]. This is linked with new forms of pedagogies that have been developed in tandem to the affordances that the new technologies provide.…”

“…This is the default tool for discussions in the LMS platforms and one of its mainstays. Even today, the online forum is still the most commonly used tool for class discussions and announcements for online courses and now hybrid courses [8]. However, over the COVID lock-down years, in which face to face classes were forced to move online, we have seen teachers adopting a combination of synchronous and asynchronous approaches to ensure some continuity for their classes.…”