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January/February
2004 - Discussion Board-Based Group Work in a Large
Enrollment First Semester Organic Chemistry Lecture Course
By: Tyson A. Miller, Visiting
Teaching Associate, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, tmiller2@uiuc.edu
Keywords: chemistry;
large enrollment; online course; online education; discussion
board; group work; organic chemistry
Note: This version contains a synopsis of the work discussed. There
is a detailed
version for those who would like a review of the details and the
data from the work.
Abstract:
This work examines
the practicality of a single facilitator implementing online discussion
board-based group work in classes with large enrollments (> 200 students).
Simultaneously, student perception of online group work value and utility
via this methodology was also measured and provided insight on the benefits
and costs with implementing discussion board training on this scale.
Comparisons between opinions from students in face-to-face and distance
education students
are also made. Students were surveyed before and after the exercise about
computer background, experience with online tools and courses, perceptions
about group work, and value of the assignment. A stark increase in student
confidence using discussion boards was reported. A higher percentage
of distance education students (vide infra) benefited from the assignment
as
compared to the rest of the class. Facilitator effort in design, construction,
and execution, and grading of the assignment was rather intensive. The
results predictably reflect the need for the integration of online work
in a sustained
manner within the design of the course to be practical for the facilitator
and popular with the students.
Background:
Students who enroll
in the first semester non-majors organic chemistry course at the University
of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are generally science or pre-professional majors
who need the course to fulfill requirements. Enrollment size is typically
600-800 students in the fall semester and 300-400 students in the spring
semester. Fall Semester 2003 was the first time the chemistry department
at UIUC had offered a course via closed-circuit projection. It was discovered
early that many students in the video section had little to no experience
with this type of educational setting, and so students were treated in this
study as distance education students. Predicting that some students who
were forced to register for the video Section B1 might be prime candidates
for dropping the course in frustration, the need existed to redesign the
course in two principal ways: 1) the distance students should have functional
connections with the students from face-to-face sections to avoid feelings
of isolation; 2) the distance students needed a medium by which they could
have an elevated amount of access to the instructor and to other students.
Discussion boards offered a technological solution for offering help to
students in a controlled and universally accessible fashion.
Objectives
of the Work:
The proposed solution to both
of these issues was to incorporate online group work into the course that
a) permitted students across the three sections to interact with others,
b) gave them hands on training in the use of technology, and c) increase
their proficiency and confidence in using that technology. If students could
gain confidence in using online discussion boards, then increased distance
student access to the instructor via discussion boards might be a viable
response to educational environment equality concerns. In addition, discussion
board-based group work may increase student efforts to continue building
online study groups with one another after the conclusion of the assignment.
Therefore, the “WebCT Assignment” (name
given for this project) was designed to answer the following questions:
1) Can large classes be trained to use WebCT in online discussion board
work efficiently and successfully? 2) Can student confidence in discussion
board use increase as a function of online group work? 3) Can a single
primary instructor effectively facilitate online discussion board group work
for
a large class? 4) Will distance education students believe they have
benefited from online group work experience as much or more than their face-to-face
student peers? 5) What will be the overall level of student satisfaction
with the exercise? 6) Is discussion board-based facilitated small group
work practical for instructors of courses with large enrollments?
The WebCT
Assignment:
Students were given two weeks
to introduce themselves and work together with 4-5 other students from other
lecture sections to solve one potential test question via online discussion
board. Students were also required to fill out online surveys before and
after the assignment to provide insight on the following issues: student
experience with classroom technology, student confidence using classroom
technology, student attitudes regarding group work, and student perceptions
about the assignment and its benefits. The assignment itself was worth 1%
of the overall course grade.
Experimental
Design:
Figure
1 shows the organization of the subgroups and the assignment. 669
students were organized into 112 subgroups that were easily combined into
8 groups of 14 subgroups. The students communicated with their own subgroup
team to solve the potential exam question and would have a different exam
question from each of the other subgroups in that group. However, with
a group-level forum, they could begin to communicate on a social or professional
level with other students in the class. This design limits their maximum
student contact to others in their group and subgroup only (84 maximum)
for the duration of the assignment and keeps the discussion boards from
cluttering into a disarray of postings from the onset.
Results – Statistics,
Scores, Participation, and Discussion Postings:
An immense amount of data was
collected throughout the course of the assignment, as well as from the surveys.
The conclusions will be highlighted without discussion in this version.
1) Student participation in various
surveys ranged from representative of class size to very high.
2) Student participation in the
assignment was very high overall. Counting all students who started the
assignment, the average was 8.5/10 points possible. When considering
only those students who completed the assignment and participated (discounting
drops and those who didn’t help their respective subgroups at all),
the average jumps to 9.3/10. The WebCT Assignment score had absolutely no
correlation with dropping the course at a later date. At the onset, 109
subgroups had 6 members while 3 subgroups started with 5 members. Overall,
72 subgroups (64.3%) operated with full participation of all its original
members. This is significant as it shows that a minority of subgroups will
likely lose members from a large class design and that only a handful of
subgroups are likely to lose significant numbers of members to the point
of requiring special attention from the facilitator. 5672 posts total were
made as part of the assignment. As a comparison, in the 13 weeks that followed,
only 1937 posts were generated on post-WebCT Assignment Instructor’s
Office and Expresso Bar forums during the remainder of the semester.
As expected, the Subgroup forums, where the subgroups posted their discussions
with one another, are where the bulk of discussion board activity lied
in
the assignment with 55.1% of all posts generated toward the effort of
advancing subgroup answers over the course of 2 weeks. Despite the large
and diverse
population of students in this course possessing a variable range of
computer skills and group work experience, perhaps the lack of any serious
(or even
minor) subgroup conflicts was one of the most pleasant outcomes from
this project.
3) Can large classes be trained
to use WebCT in online discussion board work efficiently and successfully?
Can student confidence in discussion board use increase as a function
of online group work? The answer to the first question is an unequivocal
yes. The evidence shows that the overall student participation rate
in the assignment was very high (88.9% of all students), despite the fact
that the assignment was worth only 1% of the overall course grade.
Survey
results also showed that student confidence in discussion board use
did increase. Finally, the WebCT Assignment didn’t appear to change
students’ feelings about group work overall.
4) Can a single primary instructor
effectively facilitate online discussion board group work for a large
class? The total number of hours of instructor labor associated with
this one assignment (just the hours mentioned in this article) is 214
hours for 669 students, not counting the time taken to accumulate and
analyze score and survey data. This same course offered in the alternate
semester usually has enrollments in the 300-350 range. The overall scores
and percent completion rates at the individual and subgroup level are
promising indicators of facilitator influence. When this project is repeated
in a semester with a lesser enrollment, more can be said about the student/time
ratio and whether this type of work on this scale is practical.
5) Will distance education
students believe they have benefited from online group work experience
as much or more than their face-to-face student peers? The surveys
indicate that a higher percentage of distance students may have benefited
from the assignment as compared to the class overall. The activity was
not found to be any more beneficial to the video section students than
to the class overall. The results show a significantly higher percentage
of distance students reported benefit in three major categories by at
least 8% or more over the class or the face-to-face sections: learning
to use discussion boards, using a feature of WebCT, and opportunity to
experience online group work. Student support for the assignment would
wane over time. The numbers show that far fewer students with significant
discussion board experience were in the distance section and needed the
experience gained from the assignment. It is possible that the distance
students may have had a perceived need to gain more out of the assignment
(given that the assignment was designed to benefit the distance students
the most) and therefore reflected this sentiment in the surveys. Actual
benefit was not measured in other ways (more detailed pre-assignment surveys
about the above topics might gain more insight on the matter).
6) What will be the overall
level of student satisfaction with the exercise? Data clearly shows
a sharp decline in perceived value of the assignment over time. Both sections
of students that did not have the WebCT Assignment facilitator as their
face-to-face classroom instructor gave a higher percentage of high-ratings
for the assignment than those students who had the facilitator as their
primary lecture instructor. The numbers may reflect that students who
have an instructor different from the person running the online assignment
gain at least an equivalent perception of assignment usefulness as distance
education students. Furthermore, the numbers may reflect that students
who have increased face-to-face contact with the person running an online
group assignment tend to perceive discussion board-based interactions
as less necessary to classroom success. As is, it was shown that discussion
board training for the purposes of increased instructor access for distance
students in large classes alone was not sufficient to maintain student
support for the assignment.
7) Conclusion: Is discussion
board-based facilitated small group work practical for instructors of
courses with large enrollments?
Unfortunately, the answer to the underlined question above can’t
yet be given, simply because there is but one data point: 214 facilitator
hours
yields one 2-week discussion board assignment for 669 students (not counting
midterm and end of semester survey data workup). A facilitator time/student
enrollment ratio can then be established that would give significant insight
as to how practical single facilitator small group discussion board-based work
is in large enrollment classes. That ratio would give course designers an idea
of what it would take to implement, sustain, and support this type of student
work throughout a course curriculum for classes of all sizes.
Improvements to the current design
can be made in the following ways: 1) ask more precise survey questions
detailing individual elements of the assignment, 2) further sensitivity
to timing of deadlines, 3) increase the undergraduate teaching assistant
support overall, 4) increased integration of discussion board-based group
work over the course of the semester, 5) allowing students to utilize graphics
or attachments as part of their answers.
Finally, when one begins with
the fact that only 45.1% of the entering class had any discussion board
experience at all and ends with 81.8% of the students having at least
some confidence in using discussion boards, one underlying fact remains: if
a
student doesn’t leave an organic chemistry course with any confidence
in organic chemistry, at least he or she can obtain some confidence in
learning and using a technological and educational tool that will likely
be a vital
part of his/her future. Student learning of that kind is always worth
the effort and time.
Acknowledgements:
The author would like to give
thanks to Professor Stanley Smith for his mentorship and advice. Sincere
thanks to Professor Jeff Moore for his efforts and collaboration in teaching
the course. Grateful thanks to Dr. Patricia Phillips-Batoma for her expertise
and help in the use of WebCT and in the maintenance of the course website
as a whole. Also, thanks to Dr. Iris Stovall and the Illinois Online Network
for the opportunity to share this research with the online educational world.
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