Online Discussions and Perceived Learning
Document Type
Article
Abstract
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.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in 9th Americas Conference on Information Systems Amcis 2003, 2003, pages 687-696.
APA Citation
Wu, Dezhi and Hiltz, Starr Roxanne, "Online Discussions and Perceived Learning" (2003). AMCIS 2003 Proceedings. 86. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2003/86
Rights
© 2025 Elsevier, its licensors, and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.