| Engaged dialogue is so central to Western beliefs about education (Burbules & Bruce, 2011) that one of the top faculty critiques of online education relates to perceptions of and experiences with low-quality interaction in online courses (Jaschik & Lederman, 2014; Lederman & Jaschik, 2013). A significant amount of empirical research has been done in the area of studying the quality of asynchronous online discussions (e.g., Bai, 2012; Mooney, Southard, & Burton, 2014; Wise, Hausknecht, & Zhao, 2014) but there is a lack of in-depth work pertaining to learners' own experiences with their online course discussions (Rourke & Kanuka, 2007).;This literature gap combined with the importance of learners' experiences (Dewey, 1938; Parrish, Wilson, & Dunlap, 2011) and the growth of online higher education (Allen & Seaman, 2015) grounded this study exploring online graduate students' experiences with their asynchronous course discussions. The primary data were repeated interviews with eight individual graduate students resulting in over 26 hours of student-interview data that included a stimulated recall where participants demonstrated how they participated in their course discussions. This student-interview data was contextualized with instructor interviews, course analyses, and discussion forum postings.;The cases naturally fell along a continuum from learners more positive about their discussion experiences to those notably more negative of the discussions as an activity: from the learner who said "I love the discussion boards" to the learner who said she was "underwhelmed by this method of interaction." The data were also considered thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and it was found that even the students more positive about course discussions tended to regard them as a mostly low-quality deliverable, wherein they were "going through the motions." Findings suggest that potential reasons for the low quality experience are a lack of consistent instructor presence; the ways in which assignment requirements shape participation; factors inherent to asynchronous, written communication; and limitations of the discussion forum user interface. In spite of all of this, all but one of the participants would keep the discussions as an activity and described valuing the opportunities the discussions provided for social connections, idea articulation, and collaboration. Key implications of the study are the need to re-conceptualize online course discussions as something other than the online equivalent of face-to-face discussions; establish pedagogical clarity regarding the purpose of online course discussions and actively facilitate them; improve LMS discussion forum interfaces such that they afford more positive engaged experiences; and explore the use of video tools to augment social presence. |
