Online Discussions and Perceived Learning

As major activities in distance learning courses, online discussions play an important role in student learning. Currently, both asynchronous learning courses and some primarily face-to-face courses at New Jersey Institute of Technology require online discussions. Does this requirement improve the students’ perceived learning? An exploratory study conducted in Spring 2002 drew responses to a post-course questionnaire designed to explore this issue from 116 students in two undergraduate courses and one graduate course. A set of items designed to measure perceived learning from online discussions forms a reliable, unidimensional index for this construct. The results indicate that online discussions do improve students’ perceived learning. Variations among instructors or courses are associated with differences in perceptions of student motivation, enjoyability, and learning from online discussion. Through open-ended questions, some student concerns about online discussions are identified. In the last section, some implications for improving online discussions, and future research plans are presented.

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