What if online students take on the responsibility: Students’ cognitive presence and peer facilitation techniques

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate: (a) the characteristics of online students’ cognitive presence in a peer-facilitated discussion environment, and (b) the peer facilitation techniques that enhance cognitive presence development. In this study, we examined 738 discussion messages. Analytic methods included both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The findings revealed that although cognitive presence was detected in most discussion messages, they aggregated at a lower level. The involvement of peer facilitators was found to correlate with students’ higher-level cognitive presence. In addition, we found that types of initiating questions asked by peer facilitators positively affected the level of cognitive presence. We also explored the facilitation techniques used by peer facilitators that aim to promote students’ cognitive presence.

Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Cognitive Presence in Relation to Learner Performance in Blended Learning Courses: A Mixed‑Methods Approach

“…In this approach, the best of the traditional face-to-face learning is combined with the best of online instruction, consequently improving interactions between student and student, student and instructor, and student and content, in a way which maximises learning (Dziuban, Hartman and Moskal, 2004). Cognitive presence is defined as a student's ability to construct meaning through discussion and collaboration in the learning community (Chen, Lei and Cheng, 2019). Cognitive presence involves states of puzzlement, information exchange, connection of ideas, creation of concepts, and the testing of the viability of solutions (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008).…”

An Exploratory Examination of Student-Led, Asynchronous Collaborative Online Discussions in Fostering Higher-Order Cognitive Skills and Ethical Leadership Learning

“…Moreover, this holistic exploration may shed light on how fostering collaborative knowledge construction in student-led discussions can inform and transfer to cognitive processes in leadership and other disciplines. This exploration is even more important in the context of the undergraduate experience because most studies focused on the purpose and outcomes of studentled online discussions center graduate students (see Baran & Correia, 2009;Chen et al, 2019;de Oliveira & Olesova, 2013). Thus, the purpose of this conceptual content analysis-based study was to examine 35 undergraduate students' collaborative discussion board posts at the beginning, middle, and end of an online, asynchronous Ethics and Leadership class to assess not only if and to what extent students expressed cognitive skills, in general, but also if and to what extent they understood ethical leadership via these types of discussions.…”

A description of students’ commenting behaviours in an online blogging activity

“…Moreover, the activity design should focus on encouraging meaningful and authentic discussion, for example, roleassignment strategy is often used in online discussion activities to improve discussion quality (e.g. Chen et al, 2019;Xie et al, 2014).…”