Session 31

Building Expertise & Community in an Online Threaded Discussion: Initial Findings of a IDT Research Project

Session Description:

Although online learning is increasingly gaining momentum in graduate studies, many program designers continue to struggle with effective methods for building the sense of community critical to developing expertise in a given domain. This sense of community is particularly critical in introductory courses where students are beginning to explore the field and struggling to determine their potential place in it. Unlike students in traditional graduate programs, students in online programs lack informal, collegial opportunities for discussion and socialization that contribute to community building. Online guided, threaded discussions in one way to foster and achieve the development of community for online students.

This presentation will describe the analysis of threaded discussions from an introductory graduate course in Instructional Design and Technology to explore how novice learners interact and collaborate to develop an emerging expertise in a field. The project team will describe how it captured and analyzed weekly logs of guided, threaded discussions in terms of conversational styles, evolution of ideas, the establishment and adherence to community norms, leader facilitation style and general interaction. The team will also discuss the forum's context and design, themes that emerged, and lessons for future application of threaded discussion within online graduate education.

As a result of attending this presentation, presentation participants will hopefully gain insight into the dynamics of student interaction in threaded discussion in an introductory course. Participants will be exposed to lessons for designing their own threaded discussion within an online graduate education context.

If you're interested in learning about how students build community and develop expertise in online threaded discussions, consider attending this session. Research process, context, initial findings and preliminary implications arising from the analysis of an introductory graduate course at the University of North Dakota will be discussed.

Presenter: Roberta Everson

Roberta Everson directs TLG's learning content development and LMS teams, and consults on workplace learning strategies and performance improvement. Roberta received her B. Ed from the University of Manitoba, and is currently working on a Master of Science, IDT at UND.

An experienced educator, Roberta has worked as workplace-based trainer, teacher, instructional designer and consultant. Roberta loves the diversity and challenge of her job at TLG, where she and her teams often work on leading edge learning solutions.