Centering students: humanizing online discussions Ashley c. jordan, university of arizona

TOPIC

Research supports inclusion as critical for effective learning, especially social belonging (Strayhorn, 2018). Though discussions are one way to enhance social belonging, they can be difficult to implement well in a fully online class. They may feel forced or contrived, especially if prompts are poorly designed to allow for true student-student interaction. To allow for a more genuine discussion and center student wellness, a fully online statistics class was revised to include a series of discussion prompts unrelated to course content.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

• Statistics is a difficult class for many students. This fact is perhaps exacerbated for a fully online, condensed class taught in only 7-weeks! As the instructor, I wanted to increase social belonging within the class as a way to promote effective learning.
• To allow for a more genuine discussion and center student wellness, the class was revised to include a series of discussion prompts unrelated to course content.
• Rather than assessing statistical knowledge, these graded discussions focused on topics that would serve to generate community building, celebrate diversity, support metacognitive strategies, encourage self-affirmation, and normalize self-care.
• The purpose was to humanize the online discussion fourm and lead to more meaningful connections with each other, and feelings of belongingness in the context of a challenging mathematics course.

SOTL

The scholarship of teaching and learning has consistently identified positive benefits of student engagement in higher education. For example, a review published by Trowler and Trowler (2010) indicated that student engagement is associated with academic achievement, student satisfaction, persistence, and more. Furthermore, Gunuc and Yil (2014) found that student engagement (including sense of belonging, cognitive engagement, and behavioral engagement) was associated with higher academic achievement in an undergraduate college course.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• Social Belonging: Can a fully online, asynchronous college statistics course create meaningful student-student interaction via asynchronous online discussions?
• Benefits: Will students view discussion posts that are not directly related to the course content as beneficial?

SAMPLE

Participants were drawn from an online Statistics class offered by the Psychology Department at a large university in the Southwest United States. Of the 143 students in the class, 132 students completed a quantitative survey at the end of the class, representing a 92% response rate. 123 students also provided feedback on free response questions, representing an 86% response rate for qualitative questions. The survey was intended to be anonymous so age and gender demographic information was not collected, however the Psychology major, in general is 76% female. Given the high response rate, the sample is likely to be highly representative of the overall student population.

METHOD

Students completed 5 online asynchronous discussion posts throughout the course. Each student replied to two classmates per post. They were put into groups of 33 students for discussions and the groups remained consistent throughout the term to try to facilitate a sense of community. Below is a list of the 5 discussion topics, and what they were intended to promote.

1. Introduction - students introduced themselves and learned about their classmates - promotes community building and humanizing self and others.
2. Diversity Equity, & Inclusion - students learned about the historical lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the field of statistics and reflected on the role of diversity in modern-day and now it impacts the field of statistics - promotes equity and inclusion.
3. Study Tips - students shared their study practices and reflected on whether they were working or if they needed to implement changes - promotes metacognition
4. Mid-Semester Reflection - students listed 5 things they could not do at the beginning of the semester that they can do by mid-semester - promotes self-affirmation, metacognition.
5. Mental Health break - students were encouraged to engage in self-care and post a picture of "proof" - promotes mental health and centers student wellness.

At the conclusion of the semester, students were asked to complete an anonymous survey to give feedback on the class discussions. The survey contained both quantitative and qualitative questions. Numerical data are presented below. For qualitative questions, a thematic analysis was completed using a grounded theoretical model to identify the top emerged themes from student responses.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

• In your own words, please provide any benefits you think you received from completing the discussion posts.
• Do you think there are any negatives or down sides of completing the discussion posts
• Do you have any other feedback in regard to the discussion posts?

findings

Findings were overwhelmingly positive. Students saw the discussion posts as beneficial (over 76% agreed or strongly agreed) and recommended continuing to have similar discussion post assignments in future semesters (over 78% agreed or strongly agreed).

In their own words, students described feeling a sense of belonging ("I did not feel alone"), and identified benefits of learning from their peers ("I learned how other people were best achieving success in the course as well as what was causing them problems, which helped me change my habits regarding the class."). Students shared the value of connecting with classmates ("These really helped me feel like I was a part of a class community, which made it easier for me to feel motivated to complete my work!") and of discussing topics of diversity and inclusion ("I liked the DEI discussion in particular because we were reminded about how our generation can make a change in the field of statistics by implementing diversity in future studies.").

Three key themes emerged from the qualitative data

1. Engagement & Connection: 46% of respondents mentioned the benefits of learning from classmates, engaging with peers, and not being alone.
2. Learning & Application: 39% of respondents indicated that the discussion posts helped them to apply information to the real world, reflect and gain a deeper understanding of material, and of learning new things.
3. Appreciation: 12% of respondents mentioned enjoying the discussions as a break from regular coursework and being a fun or "easy" assignment relative to other statistics-based assignments.

APPLICATIONS

• Reflect on your classes - how can you incorporate discussions that are not related to class-content, but are designed to help students succeed in the class and persist throughout the academic program?
• Let's brainstorm and discuss!