First year students' attitude to online discussion

The task required students to describe, online, an item from the media that made use of statistics. They were asked to comment on the statistical information, specifically its validity and presentation. They were then required to respond to the items posted by at least two other students. The assignment was worth 3% of their total assessment.

The conference system used for this assignment was HyperNews. Like other conferencing systems, this maintains a full archive of the discussion threads which makes it easy to monitor the extent of students' participation.

The assignment occurred during a three week period late in semester 2. Students' views on the effectiveness of the online discussion were evaluated through the conduct of two focus groups. The first group met in the week the project started, the second in the final week of semester, 5 weeks later. Each focus group had 6 student participants. Four of them were common to both groups.

The focus group deliberations were based on a series of pre-prepared questions. Discussion was allowed to range freely and was taped. Tapes were later transcribed and the results of the analysis of the transcriptions provide the main data for this presentation.

Seventy-four students participated in the exercise. Of these sixty-seven met the minimum requirement. A small number provided additional input - twelve made two or more initial posts and eight made three or four comments. Sixty-eight students had made all their posts at one or two sessions. One person returned to respond to comments.

Interaction was well disciplined. Students tended either to agree with each other or to congratulate one another on their comments.

Students involved in the first focus group expressed a range of attitudes to participation. Some had considerable experience in using newsgroups, email and the web. These students said that they were keen to start and would like to see more use being made of online learning. The other students admitted to some concern. The most common reason given was lack of familiarity with the conferencing system. One student expressed a considerable degree of discomfort with using computers at all. Most of the students also expressed some disquiet about how the discussion would proceed - they were concerned about whether it would be confrontational.

In the second focus group students said they were pleased with the way it had gone, confirmed by the overall class response. Those who had been most worried found the system and computers easy to use and had actually enjoyed the experience.

We were keen to explore the reasons why no students had engaged in extended discussion. Partly it was determined by access. Although half the students had ISP access from home, the majority undertook most of their online activity from campus labs. The high demand on these facilities meant students had trouble in gaining access to computers.

The students indicated that they didn't consider the task related to biology, and would have participated further if it had been more clearly relevant. They also weighted the importance of the task according to the marks available. They therefore considered that it only warranted the minimum amount of time.

Students are interested in participating in online discussions, and appreciate their value. However, with high contact hours in science subjects, students balance their interaction against factors such as perceived relevance and access. Integration of the forum more fully into a subject may stimulate student participation. Other negative strategies could include awarding more marks and requiring a more interactive engagement