Lory Barile: Understanding Online Peer Assisted Learning with Forums in the 'Digital Era'

Seminar
  • Date and time: Wednesday 11 December 2024, 1pm to 2pm
  • Location: Online only
  • Audience: Open to staff, students
  • Admission: Free admission, booking not required

Event details

Author: Lory Barile (Warwick)

Abstract:  In this paper we estimate the relationship between different types of engagement activities in forums designed to facilitate peer assisted learning and students’ performance in an undergraduate second year course in economics. We consider different metrics to proxy students’ engagement with the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) resource, specifically the total number of views, and the words count of messages posted in the forums on the VLE. Our results suggest that forums have a significant positive correlation with students’ performance; students are selective of the forums activities; and students from different nationalities adopt different learning strategies to study on the course, adjusting it to their needs. We also conduct a preliminary text analysis on the messages included in the forums to illustrate how different learning dimensions in peer assisted learning environments can be linked to transferable skills. The analysis shows that messages posted in the forums are mainly linked to the cognitive and meta-cognitive learning dimensions, though the social and interactive dimensions cannot be neglected. From an educational perspective, our findings suggest the necessity for VLEs tailored to promote active and interactive learning, fostering improved student performance and facilitating the acquisition of soft skills.

Co-author: Atisha Ghosh

Host:  Yaprak Tavman (York)