ABSTRACT
Asynchronous discussions are a popular feature in online higher education as they enable instructor-student and student-student interactions at the users' own time and pace. AI-driven discussion platforms are designed to relieve instructors of automatable tasks, e.g., low-stakes grading and post moderation. Our study investigated the validity of an AI-generated score compared to human-driven methods of evaluating student effort and the impact of instructor interaction on students' discussion post quality. A series of within-subjects MANOVAs was conducted on 14,599 discussion posts among over 800 students across four classes to measure post 'curiosity score' (i.e., an AI-generated metric of post quality) and word count. After checking assumptions, one MANOVA was run for each type of instructor interaction: private coaching, public praising, and public featuring. Instructor coaching appears to impact curiosity scores and word count, with later posts being an average of 40 words longer and scoring an average of 15 points higher than the original post that received instructor coaching. AI-driven tools appear to free up time for more creative human interventions, particularly among instructors teaching high-enrollment classes, where a traditional discussion forum is less scalable.
ABSTRACT
Public health edicts necessitated by COVID-19 prompted a rapid pivot to remote online teaching and learning. Two major consequences followed: households became students' main learning space, and technology became the sole medium of instructional delivery. We use the ideas of "digital disconnect" and "digital divide" to examine, for students and faculty, their prior experience with, and proficiency in using, learning technology. We also explore, for students, how household lockdowns and digital capacity impacted learning. Our findings are drawn from 3806 students and 283 faculty instructors from nine higher education institutions across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. For instructors, we find little evidence of a digital divide but some evidence of a digital disconnect. However, neither made a difference to self-reported success in transitioning courses. Faculty instructors were impacted in a myriad of diverse ways. For students, we show that closure and confinement measures which created difficult living situations were associated with lower levels of confidence in learning. The digital divide that did exist among students was less influential than were household lockdown measures in undermining student learning.
ABSTRACT
From a design perspective, this paper offers a response to the impact, value, and application of a manuscript published by Philipsen et al. (Improving teacher professional development for online and blended learning: A systematic meta-aggregative review. Educational Technology and Research Development, 67, 1145-1174. 10.1007/s11423-019-09645-8, 2019). Philipsen et al. (2019) reviewed what constitutes an effective teacher professional development program (TPD) for online and blended learning (OBL), with our response focusing on its value and application in light of an emergency shift to digital to address a global pandemic. This paper also proceeds to examine limitations in previous research into the subject and future research opportunities to investigate important components that inform the design of a resilient and scalable TPD for OBL.
