Jiarui Xie, Mimi Adjei & Ana-Paula Correia
The way instructors participate in asynchronous online discussions has the potential to affect student engagement. This study aimed to compare the effects of two instructor participation approaches: replying to student posts on discussion boards and commenting on student posts on grade pages. The study examined the impact on both the quantity of student participation and the quality of student posts. The findings revealed that when the instructor replied on discussion boards, there was significantly more interaction between students than when the instructor commented on the grade pages. However, the number of student posts had no significant difference between the two approaches. Regarding the quality of student posts, although students exhibited different proportions of knowledge construction levels, the overall quality was the same whether the instructor provided replies on discussion boards or comments on grade pages. Notably, both approaches contributed to a gradual improvement in the quality of student posts over time. When the instructor offered comments on grade pages, the proportion of social communication in student posts gradually decreased, implying that the focus of student posts was more on knowledge construction.
The poster presented at the AECT 2023 Convention