An Study About The Influence Of Role-taking On College Students' Online Discussion Participation Under CSCL

Online discussion is an important way to carry out knowledge building,but it is faced with low participation,shallow thinking and difficult management during the teaching practice.Role-taking is a way to promote self-reflection and social cognition.Research has shown that the application of role strategies in the group can play a role in organizing the collaboration process and promoting learning effectiveness.However,there is relatively little research focused the role study in online discussion.Therefore,from this perspective,the author explores the application of role-taking methods to improve the empirical research of online discussion among college students.Based on knowledge building theory and role theory,combined with the nature of online discussion and teaching reality,an online discussion activity model of role taking was constructed.This study selected four types of roles and designed the role scripts for discussion,including the new thinkers,demonstrators,skeptics and summarizers.Using the Blackboard platform(BB platform)as a computer-supported collaborative learning tool to help college student conduct online course discussions.In this study,a case study method was used.The study target was senior undergraduate at a university in Shanghai(N =56).The research course sustained 10 weeks.The curriculum's theme was based on the educational research method.The teaching practice set specific learning rules and discussion tasks,supplemented by role scripts to guide student discussion.Students' knowledge building activities on the BB platform were mainly embodied in dialogues.Research shows that taking a designated role in a group helps participants to engage in metacognitive rethinking of conversational content and organizational strategies,helping members develop s sense of collective cognitive responsibility.The discussion of the role group tends to be more kind of dialogue function than the non-role group.Their discussion was focused on the ideas and opinions,the effect of knowledge building is better.Also,the role groups can better manage the discussion process,and make a reflection about the discussion content and organizational processes.In response to the practical feedback of the four roles,the skeptics and the new thinkers are highly recognized,and the summarizers are easily overlooked due to their low participation.