Archive for November, 2011
Someone was apparently trapped in the elevator for 3 hours last week. Awesome.
Brrrrr…
my dad just sent me this – his great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather. Evan’s great-great-great-grandfather. David McConnell. Born 1797. Wow.
Notes: Jyothy, McAvinia & Keating: A visualisation tool to aid exploration of students’ interactions in asynchronous online communication
Jyothi, S., McAvinia, C., & Keating, J. (2012). A visualisation tool to aid exploration of students’ interactions in asynchronous online communication. Computers & Education, 58(1), 30–42. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.026
Abstract
This paper describes a visualisation tool to aid the analysis of online communication. The tool has two purposes: first, it can be used on a day-to-day basis by teachers or forum moderators to review the development of a discussion and to support appropriate interventions. Second, the tool can support research activities since the visualisations generated provide the basis for further qualitative and quantitative analysis of online dialogue.
The visualisation software is designed to encode interaction types simply and quickly. The software was tested and then used to analyse data from a sample of forums within the Moodle VLE. The paper discusses both the method of visualisation and analysis of the online interactions as a pilot for further research analysing interaction in discussion forums.
Intro
This paper describes the design and implementation of a diagnostic tool which provides simple visual representations of the exchanges in asynchronous discussion forum threads. The visual representation is shown within a webpage, with hyperlinked nodes displaying the body text of messages posted to discussion forums. These graphical images might assist a teacher or moderator to intervene in the discussions whenever necessary, and the visual representations of online discussions can support researchers undertaking further analysis[1].
Analysing asynchronous discussions in online environments
Given the importance ascribed to dialogue and CMC in educational theory, it follows that a means of reviewing and potentially analysing CMC interactions would therefore be useful to teachers and researchers, and research would benefit from an evidence base showing that online interactions had positive effects on students’ learning. However, the best ways of analysing CMC are not clear. Studies that have analysed the content of the online discussions are also limited. This may be due to the time required to perform such analyses (Hara, Bonk, & Angeli, 2000) and the lack of a reliable instrument or an analytical framework to analyse the online discussions. As Goodyear (2001) notes:
Analysing the content of networked learning discussions is a troublesome research area and several commentators have remarked on the difficulty of connecting online texts to discourse to learning. (Goodyear, cited Mehanna 2004: 283)
on assessing online discussions:
Formal assessment offers one indication of students’ learning, and online dialogue may then be argued to have supported this. However, unless the method of assessment includes the forum discussion in some way, it is not usually clear where and how learning in forums may have happened. Course feedback and evaluation mechanisms, similarly, may highlight the use of discussion forums as a useful supplement or yield examples of how students have used them, but ‘use’ cannot be equated with learning. Some researchers have instead proposed treating forum messages as qualitative data, and thereby draw on qualitative methods for analysis.
why build a tool to automate analysis/visualization of discourse?
Even for people accustomed to using qualitative methods as part of their research activities, they may be time-consuming to use in the context of evaluating learning in CMC. The methodological difficulties of analysing discussion forum data are therefore compounded by the practical constraints of time and experience. These issues have wider implications for the evidence base in e- learning: it is difficult to build up case studies of appropriate and effective use of technology to enhance learning, where practitioners lack the tools to make these studies.
So, VIMS looks pretty awesome at this… Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a fracking thing about the tool itself…
WTF is VIMS? No project website found, but the paper describes it:
VIMS provides real-time, radial-tree visualisation of the forum interactions, realised using a combination of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) using Perl with JavaScript. Visualisation maps are presented as interactive scalable images, viewable using most web browsers; the version described here can be seamlessly incorporated into Moodle. The technologies combined in VIMS allow the visualisation to have ‘hot spots’, on which the mouse can hover to access full details of a message. There is a continuous link between the image and the web server, implemented using AJAX, which means that the visualisation will change according as new messages are sent to the forum. An algorithm within the software depicts borders, differentiating between the threads of a discussion forum.
and the visualizations look something like:
on the role of VIMS:
VIMS has considerable advantages as a visualisation tool. First, the discussions are shown in a systematic way, with the people starting the discussion placed at the first level. There is no on-screen clutter from message text and all threads in a discussion forum can be viewed at a glance. Navigation on-screen allows the discussion to be viewed as a whole, or for the viewer to zoom in on certain areas. One or more threads can be compared easily. This visual aid could help the instructor develop a collaborative environment, by aiding him/her to visualise the active and inactive participants, and therefore inform appropriate interventions.
It is important to acknowledge the limitations of the VIMS tool too: it is in essence a support for coding and management of the data, rather than offering in and of itself a new method for analysing that data. For such analysis, we need to consider the wider model used by Schrire or indeed to pursue existing qualitative methods. VIMS does not yet allow us a way to analyse the multi-modal nature of the student discourse in unmoderated Forums, and the inclusion of images, sounds and other media which students are now accustomed to using. This is a further area of work we need to address, but one for which the other visualisation tools described in this paper are (similarly) unsuited.
Lots of other interesting papers cited in this one. Mine it.
But, I don’t understand how VIMS doesn’t appear to have a project website or information available. Is it secret sauce?
Footnotes:
- I’m wondering if this might be a useful way to display the discourse in the data I’m gathering… [↩]
On the beach at Magen’s Bay, Charlotte Amalie, USVI. Seems like a lifetime ago, and just yesterday.
It’s too early for this bullshit.
Notes: Zydney, deNoyelles & Kyeong-Ju Seo (2012) – Creating a community of inquiry in online environments…
Zydney, J. M., deNoyelles, A., & Kyeong-Ju Seo, K. (2012). Creating a community of inquiry in online environments: An exploratory study on the effect of a protocol on interactions within asynchronous discussions. Computers & Education, 58(1), 77–87. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.07.009
Abstract:
The purpose of our research was to examine the influence of an online protocol on asynchronous discussions. A mixed-methods study compared two online graduate classes: one that used a protocol and one that did not use a protocol for the same discussion about a complex reading. Analysis of the data revealed that the online protocol more evenly distributed the presence of cognitive, social, and teaching elements necessary to create and sustain an online community of inquiry. Use of the protocol also promoted more shared group cognition and more student ownership of the discussion and empowered students to facilitate themselves, helping to reduce the instructor workload. These findings may enable educators to provide more dynamic interaction and richer learning experiences in asynchronous online environments.
purpose and context of the study:
Given the literature concerning online discussions, the use of protocols could prove particularly powerful to support both students and teachers. Concerning instructional design and organization, protocols may provide a very structured discussion prompt, which let students know their role, giving built-in supports leading to a progression in thought. However, it is still open-ended enough so that students can select their own topic, experiencing more ownership of the discussion. Protocols may reduce the instance of discussion monologues, since the protocol explicitly requires interaction. Because the protocol spells out who should post and who should respond at a given time, there is no need for a specific facilitator, as the participants essentially facilitate themselves.
they looked at 2 fully-online grad-level classes in a higher-ed setting. n=12 and n=14.
on protocol vs. non-protocol:
The protocol class received the “Save the Last Word for Me” protocol (McDonald et al., 2003), which was modified for an online discussion forum. In this protocol, at the beginning of the week, half the students were asked to post a quote from the reading, which they thought was important but particularly complex. They were told not to reveal the reasoning behind their selection of the quote. Then during the middle of the week, two students posted a reaction to each quote. At the end of the week, the students who posted the quote revealed their original interest in the passage and what they learned from reading the reactions from the other two students. This discussion was then repeated the following week with the other half of the students posting the quotes for discussion. The non-protocol class received the open-ended discussion question: “How does thinking about a concept from multiple perspectives help or hinder the learner from gaining a deeper understanding?” The students responded to this initial prompt based on their readings and then replied to at least one other student’s response.
Results:
Overall, there was a more even distribution for the protocol group among cognitive, social, and teaching presences than in the non- protocol group, as shown in Table 2. Further analysis was done for the categories within each of these elements as described in the following sections.
so, with protocol, more people were more actively engaged, rather than a few keeners hogging all the fun.
Based on our analysis of this data, there were several interesting differences between the protocol and non-protocol discussions. For example, the protocol group had a more balanced distribution of the three presences than the non-protocol group. This is more reflective of the COI model, which emphasizes that all three presences have to meaningfully interact in order to facilitate a successful learning community (Garrison et al., 2000, 2010). The protocol group also demonstrated more shared group cognition than individual cognition. This increased interaction likely resulted from the structure of the activity and the defined roles for communication that prompted students to reply to one another to problem solve how to interpret the quotes selected.
This would be handy to look at differences in discourse between 2 different classes. Less relevant for my research, since both groups are in the same class, with the same instructor, doing the same activities. But if they weren’t, perhaps varying protocol used by different instructors could explain varying levels of engagement…
There’s a PROTOCOL to be followed!
Feels like -25C. Dang.
My favourite machine on campus…