Link Me Up: Exploring the Ways Linking Notes Reshape Students' Online Participation

• Main Authors: Phirangee, Krystle, Hewitt, J., Makos, A.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: online engagement; pilot study; asynchronous; conferencing; higher education; online discussion; graduate class; linking notes; threaded discussion; collaboration; affective factors; Victoria Island
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/73499

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education. Victoria Island, BC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This paper describes the findings of a pilot study involving a graduate class that used a linking notes feature in the online learning environment, Pepper. Quantitative data from the Pepper database was collected along with an online questionnaire distributed to students in the discussion forum. Findings indicate that students linked to each other’s notes to synthesize ideas as well as challenge or support others. More so, there seemed to be affective factors involved, as students felt happy when others linked to their notes but felt ignored when their notes were not linked. This study serves as a pilot for a larger-scale project focusing on the behavioral changes in online participation through linking student notes in graduate courses.