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Online Discussions Across Three Universities: Student Participation and Pedagogy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2003

Rosalee A. Clawson ,
Rebecca E. Deen  and
Zoe M. Oxley
Rosalee A. Clawson
Affiliation:
assistant professor of political science at Purdue University. Her research interests include media and politics, political psychology, and the politics of race and gender. She can be reached by email at clawson@polsci.purdue.edu.
Rebecca E. Deen
Affiliation:
assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her primary research field is American politics. Current projects include studies of presidential use of vetoes, the relationship between the president and Supreme Court, and the role of women as legislative leaders. She can be reached by email at deen@uta.edu.
Zoe M. Oxley
Affiliation:
assistant professor of political science at Union College. Her research interests include women and electoral politics, media and politics, public opinion, and political psychology. She can be reached by email at oxleyz@union.edu.
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Abstract

From PowerPoint presentations to web-based quizzes to entire classes taught online, technological changes have had a strong influence on pedagogical practices. The initial research into the pedagogical effectiveness of these emerging technologies suggests there are many ways in which they might be useful (Boschmann 1995; Hiltz 1994; Palloff and Pratt 2001). In this paper, we examine student participation on a structured online discussion group that spanned three universities and address two research questions: what explains student participation in online discussion groups and how effective are these groups as pedagogical tools? To address these topics, we draw upon our use of online discussions as a class assignment during the fall semester of 2000. First, we examine previous research and generate several expectations about student behavior and attitudes.

Type
THE TEACHER
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 713 - 718
Copyright
© 2002 by the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through an Interdisciplinary Course Development Grant. Additionally, we would like to thank Michael Moore for his helpful suggestions and Susan Drossman for her data entry assistance.