Using asynchronous online discussions in primary school project work

Abstract

<span>Using asynchronous online discussions for interschool collaborative project work represents one of the innovative practices in the Singapore classroom. With anytime, anywhere access to interactions among the students and teachers, the asynchronous nature of these interactions leads to new paradigms for teaching and learning, with both unique problems of coordination and unique opportunities to support active participation and collaborative learning. A research study was conducted to investigate how primary school students participate and learn in project work based on co-construction of knowledge in asynchronous online learning environments. 10 teachers and 20 students from 5 primary schools participated in this half-year long research study. Teachers crafted project tasks for implementation at the students' level and these tasks were addressed collaboratively by the students who formed project groups with members from another school. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of students' activity in the asynchronous online environment were conducted. Students' sent and received notes as well as the frequency of scaffolds used in the online environment were evaluated. Each note was also ranked according to Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson's (1997)</span><em>Interaction Analysis Model.</em><span> The findings provided evidence to suggest that primary school students participating in the online project work learning environment were capable of the co-construction of knowledge up till Phase IV of the</span><em>Interaction Analysis Model.</em>

Analysing high school students' participation and interaction in an asynchronous online project-based learning environment

“…A similar trend in primary and secondary school students' interaction was observed both in this study and the previous study (Jamaludin & Quek, 2006), that is these students' participation notes resided mainly at phase I and to a lesser extent in phases II to V. The explanation for the large percentage of phase I notes could be that coconstruction of knowledge may not always be an observable phenomenon in the online learning environment (Kosiak 2004). Basically, IAM provided the type of discourse that was most frequently used in the online discussions and determined the progression of the postings throughout the different phases of the model.…”

“…Only a small percentage of contributions (3.8%) could be categorised as higher order cognition (phases III, IV and V) and awareness of knowledge construction. Interestingly, a similar trend was also found in the earlier case study conducted in five primary schools' asynchronous online project-based classrooms (Jamaludin & Quek, 2006) where students' notes mainly resided in phase I but not phase III and beyond. The findings seemed to suggest there is a need to further investigate (a) why students did not move beyond phase III of knowledge construction, (b) what teachers could do to help students achieve higher order thinking and (c) how students could interact not just socially but more cognitively, leading to deeper understanding of learning with one another.…”

“…In other words, content analysis studies allow observations to be made about the social and cognitive interactions between learners, levels of participation, the collaborative activity between learners, and the level of knowledge construction for the learners. The research gap identified was that there was no research conducted on high school students' projectbased learning in asynchronous online project-based environment after the first study of asynchronous online project based learning was conducted at the primary school level (Jamaludin & Quek, 2006). The findings showed that almost 86% of the students' notes were found to be low level notes residing in Phases I and II based on the coding scheme from Gunawardena et al, (1997) stating that the five phases of knowledge construction are necessary for co-construction of new knowledge in the collaborative learning setting, thus a very low percentage of high level notes would imply an unsatisfactory quality of knowledge co-construction among the learners.…”

Student Participation in Online Discussions

“…Many previous studies have found that limited student contribution in online discussion forums to be a persistent and widespread problem (Burt et al 1994;Cheong and Cheung 2008;Hew 2004, 2006;De Wever et al 2006;Guzdial 1997;Hew and Cheung 2003a;Jamaludin and Quek 2006;Kanuka and Anderson 1998;Khine et al 2003;Kucuk et al 2010;Lazonder et al 2003;Lee et al 2011;Maor 2010;McLoughlin and Luca 2000;Wan and Johnson 1994;Yukselturk 2010).…”

Investigating design and technology students' participation and learning in a technology mediated learning environment

“…The mediation of technology in this context involves technology acting as intermediary agent in effecting communication among learners in an online environment. In such an environment, teachers play major roles in designing the educational experience, facilitating the learning and providing direct instruction (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison & Archer, 2001;Jamaludin & Quek, 2006).…”