Abstract
De Wever, B., Van Keer, H., Schellens, T., & Valcke, M. (In press). Structuring asynchronous discussion groups: The impact of role support and self-assessment on students' levels of knowledge construction through social negotiation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
This article focuses on the instructional approaches in online asynchronous discussion groups implemented in a first year university course in instructional sciences. More particularly, it examines the impact of the introduction of roles and the added value of self-assessment on students' level of knowledge construction in these online asynchronous discussions.
The transcripts of 20 discussion groups were used as the research data for this study. The transcripts of all messages, submitted during the 12 week discussion period, comprising 4 discussion themes of 3 weeks each, were analysed. Taking into account the hierarchical nested nature of the research data, repeated measures multilevel modelling was adopted to analyse the data of the content analysis performed.
The results point at a significant positive impact of assigning roles to students. However, this positive impact depends on the moment of the introduction the roles. Higher levels of social knowledge construction were found in discussion groups where roles were introduced right at the start of the discussions and faded out towards the end. The results further indicate that self-assessment has no significant added value.
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