|
Informing Science + IT Education Conference 2003 Proceedings
| Informing Science + IT Education Conference |
| Pori, Finland June 24-27, 2003 |
| The Effectiveness of Online Synchronous Discussion |
| I have been exploring ways to incorporate online techniques into my MBA course in Management of Information |
| Technology. The course uses small-group discussion of case studies, so online synchronous discussion seemed |
| appropriate. After a small-scale successful experiment, I offered most of the spring 2001 course offering online. |
| Although the students were enthusiastic, I got the disturbing feeling stu-dents were not really learning from the |
| online discussions. So I administered a short multiple-choice post-test to the class. I gave the same test to a later |
| class with virtually identical material delivered tradi-tionally. Scores were about 20% higher for the traditional |
| group, and statistical analysis verifies that this difference is not due to chance. So synchronous online discussion |
| seems less effective than classroom instruction in this context. |
| I suggest possible reasons for the lesser effectiveness of this online technique and consider what other online |
| techniques might be more effective for this material. |
| Keywords: online instruction, synchronous discussion, threaded discussion, online infrastructure, in-structional |
ISSN
1535-07-03
Unless otherwise indicated, this paper has undergone blind external review by three or more reviewers.
Types of Papers: A Best Paper, Regular Paper, Short Paper, Informal Paper,
Unrefereed Panel Paper
|