The life and times of an online discussion

Teaching online and facilitating effective discussion with students requires adapting existing patterns of traditional classroom discussion techniques. This paper examines the life and times of a number of online discussions in both graduate and undergraduate papers for eduction students at the University of Waikato. Key features examined include the creation of an effective online environment model, the level and type of participation, along with modes of effective discussion assessment. The impact and development of the conversational style software environment that includes pictures of the participants has proved to be a critical aspect of discussion development and innovation.

Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results

While there is agreement that participation in online asynchronous discussions can enhance student learning, it has also been identified that there is a need to investigate the impact of participation in online discussions on student course performance. This paper presents a case study based on an undergraduate engineering management unit employing a formally assessed online discussion area. It was observed that while many students read a significant number of discussion postings, generally, the posting of new and reply messages occurred at the minimum level required to qualify for the assignment marks. Based on correlation and multiple regression analysis, it was observed that two variables were significantly related to a student's final unit mark—prior academic ability and the number of new postings made to the online discussion. Each new posting contributed three times as much to the final unit mark as its nominal assessment value, suggesting that the work in preparing their new discussion postings assisted students in the completion of a range of assessable tasks for the unit. The number of postings read was not significantly correlated with the final unit mark, suggesting that passive lurking in this online discussion did not significantly contribute to student learning outcomes.

Scenarios as springboards for reflection on practice : stimulating discussion

Increasingly there is an expectation that new graduates will have developed, prior to their induction into teaching, sound theoretical knowledge in relation to practice. However, in Australia, many pre-service teachers have insufficient time in the field to develop reflective practice and to observe how experienced teachers enhance their own knowledge through reflection on practice. In this article we discuss one way to introduce teacher education students to the notion of reflective practice. We explore the potential of scenarios to develop reflective thinking in pre-service teacher education students and highlight the processes and requisite criteria for developing scenarios that capture the rich and complex experiences of classroom practitioners. The scenario presented here has been fashioned from a pre-service teacher's story of classroom practice collected from her during an interview for a research project. While the scenario was intended for use only with pre-service teachers in order to increase their knowledge-base and analytical skills, when it was trialled with a group of experienced teachers in order to ascertain its suitability for novice teachers, an unexpected outcome was that it resonated with the teachers in ways that enabled them also to reflect more deeply on their professional practices. We speculate that the processes of scenario construction may also be valuable in other settings where reflective practice is a professional requisite.

A conceptual framework for assessing interaction quality in online discussion forums

The use of discussion forums in education has long been a hot topic in tertiary education. Discussion forums’ activities help learners to share and gain knowledge from each other. However, setting up discussion forums does not ensure that learners interact with each other actively and grading of discussion forum participation is done to ensure qualitative learner participation. Currently, a major focus has been put onto the better use of discussion forums, but the way in which quality of participation can be evaluated has yet to be adequately investigated. This paper presents a conceptual model, based on an extensive review of current literature in related areas, as a way forward in looking at the assessment of quality in online discussion forums. The main benefits of the proposed framework are towards facilitators, as a way to assess learners’ online contributions, while students may use it to understand what is expected of them as participants in online discussion forums

Indigenous performing arts and the problem of judging 'excellence': A discussion paper

In this paper we look at the persistent debate over notions of access and excellence and intrinsic and instrumentalist rationales for arts practice within cultural policy discussion. Recent research into the Indigenous performing arts in Australia underlines the particular difficulties faced by the sector in balancing the demands of community participation, social inclusion and high-quality aesthetic outcomes. The balancing act has proven unsustainable for some Indigenous performing arts companies and their viability is now in doubt. This suggests that a re-consideration of the question of the purpose and value of the Indigenous performing arts is timely.