دانلود رایگان مقاله تعامل در بحث های آنلاین و نتایج یادگیری

Abstract

The increased use of online discussions in learning environments both formal and informal, positions the construct of interactivity as central to learning. Interactivity in learning communities' online discourse is viewed in this study as a socio-constructivist process. It is the network of interactions among content items and participants which drives a collective knowledge construction process. Conceptualizing interactivity in the literature is still unclear and not enough is known about its role in knowledge construction and about its relationship to learning outcomes. In addition, assessing learning outcomes using analytics has not matured fully and is still subject to intense development. This study thus sets out to investigate the role of interactivity as a process of knowledge construction within online discussions, and in particular, its association with learning outcomes, as measured by formal assessment tasks. We present significant positive correlations between various interactivity measures, taken from various learning communities, and a set of well-known learning assessments. We suggest that patterns of interactivity among learners can be measured, and teach us, not just about group dynamics and collaboration, but also about the actual individual learning process.

4.3. Conclusions and future work

This study focuses on individual learner's behavior rather than on community-wide measures. Our investigation examined a range of community discussion aspects. Future research should transfer the spotlight to the entire community as a unit of analysis, in order to better understand which community's characteristics (for example, structuring, moderating mechanism, assessment tools and more) might result which learning interactions. The analysis of significant correlations among the interactivity variables themselves suggested that interactivity can be viewed as a two-dimensional construct, as opposed to our suggested theoretical-based model. A reliable grouping of the variables is still subject to extended data collection and analysis, but a rough division might shed some light for the sake of future research. The first group of variables can be seen as representing pure participation or engagement, and perhaps this dimension was more traditionally researched until now, in the context of interactivity. The second grouping can be seen as representing the community oriented behavior, or simply the impact that the learner has on her community.