Techtalk: Building Academic Literacy through Online Discussion Forums

Learning within a course management system (CMS) has become a task for college academic literacy. Pugh, Pawan, and Antommarchi (2000) acknowledge the role of new technologies in presenting college academic literacy as the ability to manage, synthesize, and organize information within multiple texts, genres, and environments. In 2003, more than 90% of colleges and universities surveyed in the U.S. and abroad had adopted a CMS such as Blackboard or WebCT (Hawkins, Rudy, & Madsen, 2004). Typically, the CMS delivers course documents, such as syllabi and assignments, or handles assignment submission and posting of grades. At a minimum, students need to be able to read an online course site, download materials, and post assignments. How many developmental education programs expose students to a CMS at this most basic level?Full implementation of the CMS utilizes discussion forums. Previously, this column explored the nature of online discussion (e.g., Caverly & MacDonald, 2001). This year’s columns present ways to use the CMS to build the academic literacy skills of developmental college students. Here, the focus on discussion forums is organized along the three elements of a theoretical framework for developing an online “community of inquiry” (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), indicating that successful online interaction provides a social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.Social PresenceFirst, successful online discussion provides a social presence, in which students and instructor are able to present themselves as “real people” and communicate with their personality. Online discussion builds on the motivating social practice of today’s college students, who use technology to contact friends and family throughout the day. Research conducted with face-toface collaborative learning groups has shown their positive effects on student motivation for learning. Of interest to developmental educators is the finding that low-income, first-generation college students benefit more from classroom discussions and collaborative learning projects than a control group (Filkins & Doyle, 2002). Just as electronic games can motivate students to persist through frequent feedback, the online environment can motivate students to persist through feedback from instructors and peers.Productive social presence must be built, beginning with safe online activities that allow personal exchanges. Brown (2001) has identified three stages of community building among graduate students in an online course: online friendship development, community acceptance after meaningful threaded discussions, and camaraderie. Students must come to feel like insiders in the group. Whether these stages hold for developmental students remains unstudied. Those who have taught online understand that social presence also depends upon the other two elements of the framework and is fostered by the instructor’s participation and prompt feedback.Cognitive PresenceIn the second framework element, cognitive presence, students construct meaning through sustained communication. Well-structured online discussion forums can provide students with extensive practice in reading and writing. The following cognitive strategy examples work well in the online environment.In a literature circle (Daniels, 1994) students are assigned to small groups to discuss a common text, either narrative or expository. Each student takes on a different role that specifies a contribution to the group. One of Daniel’s roles is the connector, who writes about connections between the text and his or her own personal, school, or work life; news events; or other writings. To avoid postings without discussion, the instructor should then require (for points) each student to respond to the contributions of their group members. A variation of this format is the idea circle (Guthrie & McCann, 1996), in which each student reads and synthesizes multiple texts on a group topic (an academic literacy skill identified by researchers such as Shanahan, 2003).