Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation

The authors report the results of a study that provides bases for comparison between the time necessary to participate in courses delivered asynchronously online and courses delivered in a traditional classroom setting. Weekly discussion threads from 21 sections of six courses offered as part of onl...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales:	Abbie H. Brown, Tim Green
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Athabasca University Press 2009
Materias:	Distance Learning Distance Education Threaded Discussion Asynchronous Learning Special aspects of education LC8-6691
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/e7e0555f73b842969e2fa0238938e451
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:e7e0555f73b842969e2fa0238938e451
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:e7e0555f73b842969e2fa0238938e4512021-12-02T19:25:29ZTime students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation10.19173/irrodl.v10i6.7601492-3831https://doaj.org/article/e7e0555f73b842969e2fa0238938e4512009-12-01T00:00:00Zhttp://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/760https://doaj.org/toc/1492-3831The authors report the results of a study that provides bases for comparison between the time necessary to participate in courses delivered asynchronously online and courses delivered in a traditional classroom setting. Weekly discussion threads from 21 sections of six courses offered as part of online, degree-granting, accredited, graduate programs were examined. The purpose of this research is to determine whether students are spending more or less time participating in an online course than in a traditional classroom. The discussion size (i.e., the number of words per discussion) was determined using the automatic word count function in MS Word. Once the word counts for each course section were determined, the average words per discussion were calculated. The authors used 180 words per minute to calculate the average reading time, based on the work of Ziefle (1998) and Carver (1985, 1990), in order to determine the average minutes per week a student spent reading the discussions. The study indicates that a typical, graduate-level, online, asynchronous discussion requires about one hour a week of reading time, and the time commitment for participatory activity is similar to that of traditional, face-to-face courses, given that it takes under two hours to compose initial messages and responses to the discussion prompt. Although these findings are informative, further research is recommended in the area of time spent on online course activities in terms of student hours earned to enable a direct focus on various student characteristics, such as English language competency and student level.Abbie H. BrownTim GreenAthabasca University PressarticleDistance LearningDistance EducationThreaded DiscussionAsynchronous LearningSpecial aspects of educationLC8-6691ENInternational Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, Vol 10, Iss 6 (2009)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Distance Learning Distance Education Threaded Discussion Asynchronous Learning Special aspects of education LC8-6691
spellingShingle	Distance Learning Distance Education Threaded Discussion Asynchronous Learning Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Abbie H. Brown Tim Green Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
description	The authors report the results of a study that provides bases for comparison between the time necessary to participate in courses delivered asynchronously online and courses delivered in a traditional classroom setting. Weekly discussion threads from 21 sections of six courses offered as part of online, degree-granting, accredited, graduate programs were examined. The purpose of this research is to determine whether students are spending more or less time participating in an online course than in a traditional classroom. The discussion size (i.e., the number of words per discussion) was determined using the automatic word count function in MS Word. Once the word counts for each course section were determined, the average words per discussion were calculated. The authors used 180 words per minute to calculate the average reading time, based on the work of Ziefle (1998) and Carver (1985, 1990), in order to determine the average minutes per week a student spent reading the discussions. The study indicates that a typical, graduate-level, online, asynchronous discussion requires about one hour a week of reading time, and the time commitment for participatory activity is similar to that of traditional, face-to-face courses, given that it takes under two hours to compose initial messages and responses to the discussion prompt. Although these findings are informative, further research is recommended in the area of time spent on online course activities in terms of student hours earned to enable a direct focus on various student characteristics, such as English language competency and student level.
format	article
author	Abbie H. Brown Tim Green
author_facet	Abbie H. Brown Tim Green
author_sort	Abbie H. Brown
title	Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
title_short	Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
title_full	Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
title_fullStr	Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
title_full_unstemmed	Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
title_sort	time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation
publisher	Athabasca University Press
publishDate	2009
url	https://doaj.org/article/e7e0555f73b842969e2fa0238938e451
work_keys_str_mv	AT abbiehbrown timestudentsspendreadingthreadeddiscussionsinonlinegraduatecoursesrequiringasynchronousparticipation AT timgreen timestudentsspendreadingthreadeddiscussionsinonlinegraduatecoursesrequiringasynchronousparticipation
_version_	1718376591643377664

Time students spend reading threaded discussions in online graduate courses requiring asynchronous participation

Ejemplares similares