دانلود رایگان مقاله ساخت مدل های توضیح رفتار مشارکت دانش آموز در بحث آنلاین ناهمزمان

Abstract

Previous studies have invested much effort in understanding how participation in asynchronous online discussion affects student learning, and what factors influence student participation behavior. Results of these studies have been inconclusive and these investigations are often conducted from isolated perspectives. Relying on social cognitive theory, this study proposes two dynamic student participation models in online dialogue and particularly highlights understudied factors – collective efficacy, social ability, reading behavior, the time dimension of participation – to examine the mediation and causal relationship among those factors and their influence on learning. The models are tested utilizing data collected from a large US university. Specifically, while the predictive constructs are operationalized through the survey instruments, the outcome measures are modeled using electronic trace data and actual evaluation information. Data is analyzed using the Partial Least Squares modeling method. Results demonstrate the intertwined relationship among constructs and a different influencing mechanism for each construct on participation behavior and learning. By comparing these two built models, the time dimension of participation is shown to be more influential in predicting student learning than posting and reading actions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study.

6. Conclusion

The reported study developed and empirically explored two student participation behavior models in online discussion through the lens of social cognitive theory. These two models demonstrated how different aspects of participation behavior influence student learning performance differently and especially highlighted the often overlooked influence of reading behavior and time dimension of participation. Moreover, these models investigated the role of collective efficacy, social ability, and system functionality in online discussion and explained how these constructs interact with participation behavior to generate a significant impact on student learning. Even though the findings of the reported are significant for CMC and promising in igniting new discussions on how students participate in asynchronous online discussion, it should be acknowledged that these findings emerge from one, specific context: a computer supported collaborative learning course at a major research university. Researchers need to be careful to over generalize the findings to other contexts without further considerations. Future studies can actually replicate this research to other disciplines and contexts with more test subjects to reach a more generalized model of student participation in asynchronous online discussion. Moreover, in this study, posting and reading action only considered the quantitative aspect of participation, and quality was not properly recognized. Future research can examine how to incorporate the quality measure into the models of participation and further examine changes of models and their influence on student learning.