ATTITUDES OF COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS TOWARDS THE USE OF STRUCTURED AND UNSTRUCTURED DISCUSSION FORUMS IN FULLY ONLINE COURSES

Moanes H. Tibi
Dr., Head of Computer Science Department, Beitberl Academic College, Israel, tibi@beitberl.ac.il

Abstract

Asynchronous online courses are one of the more popular modes of conducting online learning. Within the asynchronous online course, the asynchronous discussions play an important role in student learning since it replaces the face-to-face interaction of the traditional classroom. Asynchronous discussions can take place with the help of different CMC tools while discussion forums are the most used tools for establishing discussions and providing opportunities for collaborative learning and teaching transactions. However, simply asking students to participate and collaborate in discussion forums cannot guarantee that effective collaborative learning is taking place within the discussion forum. Thus, it is important to structure and organize discussion forums in order to make discussions more effective for learning, collaboration and knowledge construction.

This study aimed at investigating and analyzing the attitudes and opinions of computer science students, at two academic colleges of Education, towards the use of structured and unstructured discussion forums in computer science courses that were entirely conducted online. Based on these research objectives, the following study hypotheses were examined:

• There will be differences in how instructors' feedback will affect discussions in the two types of discussion forums (structured and unstructured),
• Students of the structured discussion forum will share more knowledge among themselves than the students of the unstructured discussion forum,
• There will be differences in how students will find the organization of the two types of discussion forums.

The used structured discussion forums in this study consisted of the following three elements: (1) preparatory instructions about individual participation, (2) instructions about group collaboration, and (3) instructors' role in organizing the discussion.

The participants of the survey were 52 Arab students in computer science education at two academic Colleges of Education. The students in each course were randomly divided into two groups: the experimental group, which participated in the structured discussion forum, and the control group, which participated in the unstructured discussion forum.

The instrument of the survey was a questionnaire, which was distributed to all participants in a face-to-face meeting at the end of the online course. The used questionnaire for collecting the data consisted of closed- and open-ended questions asking students to provide their opinions and suggestions about the use of discussion forum in online courses.

The results revealed that the attitudes and opinions (quantitative and qualitative) of students who participated in the structured discussion forum were clearly positive (all hypotheses were accepted) compared to the attitudes of students who participated in the unstructured discussion forum. Based on the results of the study the researcher suggested some appropriate recommendations and implications for future research.

Keywords: asynchronous online learning; structured and unstructured discussion forum; attitudes of computer science students.