Hi Jeff,

Certainly! Here is a link to a preprint of the article from the chemistry education context: https://publish.illinois.edu/ilearngroup/files/2022/02/Ask_for_help_manuscript_final.pdf

In some cases -- like this chemistry course -- there are many situations where students get real value out of the discussions, and other times (like my own courses, it seems!) students don't see it that way. Anecdotally as well, I have enough clarifications and questions from students through other channels (mostly email) in online courses to suggest there is a need for the kind of support a discussion forum can provide. But, perhaps sometimes the incentives and risks (e.g., fear of seeming unknowledgable to peers) of forum participation make it seem a bit less attractive of an option.

Thanks for the reference, and I agree that the public/private nature of online discussions can impact the nature of those discussions. 

I often struggle with how to encourage/invite vulnerability in public spaces that are online, which is part of a larger challenge I experience when trying to create community in online courses. It's always nice to see examples of that sort of thing done well, which it seems the online chemistry course did. I look forward to reading over your manuscript. 

Hello University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign project team and Jeff! This research project is of special interest to me, as are approaches generally to deepening online learning. This thread of conversation is particularly of interest as, like Jeff (and probably most visitors here) I'm always thinking pedagogically of ways to ensure quality participation - and I'm intrigued by the approach of giving 25% credit for posting questions and responses weekly. As professors, we all want to make sure we aren't answering questions to individual students via email that all could be learning from (or worse, over and over writing similar responses, managing private email!). A starting point would be to have a specific forum for "Questions Related to Problem-Sets" or other homework help-oriented open forum for Q&A. Even if a student is spending time responding - and thereby writing about what they presumably already know, one could argue "quality participation" due to the cognitive process of crafting a clear, succinct answer that another student could understand. A lot of productive cognitive engagement can go on right there. Giving so much of the course grade to Q&A activity also simplifies setting up a culture of safety - I'm asking because the instructor requires questions and I'm answering because that's required as well. Very safe. I actually think it's pretty interesting! I am delighted to see the team is already planning to pursue a better understanding of effective ways to create a collaborative culture of helping in online environments. Making the behavior count is a winner. 

 

Personally I have those same experiences quite often as well -- sometimes a student asks a wonderful question in email, and I wish everyone saw it! Or, I get the same procedural question several times (especially, this time of year, when will grades be posted?).

Hi everyone,

Great discussion! I echo everything that Michelle and Nigel have said. In addition, offering credit for posting to the forum, and getting students to engage with the forum early in the semester is key. Often, students don't view forums as a useful learning resource or forget to use them altogether. 

In terms of quality participation, there are many sides to consider. I agree that different forums serve different purposes, and there are various ways to implement them. 

And yes, we do see productive cognitive engagement in the forums, in this paper, you'll see examples of students writing detailed answers in a supportive fashion. 

https://publish.illinois.edu/ilearngroup/files/2022/02/Ask_for_help_manuscript_final.pdf

In related work, we are currently investigating how to streamline discussion threads through writing prompts. This more so speaks to general advice and community building to explore further a classroom culture of safety. 

Hi Jena, 

Thanks for this question. For the "Help-Seeking in Online Courses" project, we analyzed help-seeking posts (i.e., requests for help) across the level of explicitness. Then, we analyzed the subsequent responses to an initial post in terms of how substantive and detailed the answers were, so it was more of a contextual analysis. The methods are outlined in this paper, https://publish.illinois.edu/ilearngroup/files/2022/02/Ask_for_help_manuscript_final.pdf

I also checked in with one of our co-authors, Dr. Genevieve Henricks, who adds this insight about some discourse analytic techniques she used, to examine whether men and women used gendered language in the discussion forums. She wrote:

We conducted a text analysis to explore the use of gendered language in the discussion forums. To do this we used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., 2015), the 2001 version of which Newman et al. (2008) also used to analyze gendered language. We used their study as a building block for choosing which LIWC categories to examine for possible relations to use gendered language, and we ultimately examined the LIWC counts for Word Count; ratings for the Authentic, Analytic, and Clout categories; and percentages for the Pronouns, Discrepancies, Tentative, Social Processes, Numbers, and Certainty categories. We further explored whether the gendered language varied according to posting type (e.g., posting a solution to a homework problem, asking a question, or answering someone’s else's question). We found that although students used gendered language, they did NOT do so along gendered lines; however, we found that posting types revealed differences in gendered language use.  

Excellent question! We have two approaches represented here: one is a large, retrospective study of all students across several sections of different courses, which is the source for Destiny's work discussed in the video. We focused on introductory STEM courses that might be perceived as "gateway" courses to STEM participation, which may be barriers to graduating with a STEM degree. For Amos's work, participants were college students with appropriate familiarity with the topic, so that they could judge the quality of helpful replies effectively.

Adding to Destiny's important points, across the courses we've examined, in different STEM fields, we've found positive effects for behaviors we'd expect to impact learning (e.g., engaging in self-regulated learning strategies, such as metacognition), for students from all demographic groups.

As an example, Nigel Bosch and colleagues (https://pnigel.com/papers/bosch-urimprove-umap1...) noted that students’ behaviors, including exam submission times and forum usage, were related to improvement, independent of whether they were from groups underrepresented in STEM or not. This suggests that online STEM courses do not disproportionately disadvantage students from groups underrepresented in STEM and that encouraging students to engage in behaviors that should support learning may be especially crucial to consider for online college STEM courses.

Hi Jason,

Thank you for raising these interesting points. Starting with your second point, we did not examine relations between academic goal orientations and help-seeking, given the nature of the data (for most of this project, we conducted analyses after the course was completed and did not intervene with the students while they were taking the course).

In some courses we've examined, we have looked at whether the student was a STEM major and, in all cases that I can recall, we have NOT found any relation between STEM major and the behavior of interest (in this case, asking for help in the discussion forum). 

Still, I think you're onto something important with these two points. In particular, we should be digging deeper to see what might prevent some students from seeking help when they need it. Then, once we can identify what is deterring them, we can begin to find ways to help them avoid the deterrent and encourage them to seek help when needed.