Judy Sheard [HREF1],
Lecturer, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering [HREF2],
Monash University [HREF3], Victoria,
Australia. judy.sheard@csse.monash.edu.au
JanMiller [HREF4], Lecturer, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering [HREF2], Monash University [HREF3], Victoria, Australia. jan.miller@csse.monash.edu.au
Sita Ramakrishnan [HREF5], Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering [HREF2], Monash University [HREF3], Victoria, Australia. sita.ramakrishnan@csse.monash.edu.au
John Hurst [HREF6], Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering [HREF2], Monash University [HREF3], Victoria, Australia. john.hurst@csse.monash.edu.au
Asynchronous discussion forums can be used for a number of different purposes, and implemented in a variety of ways that permit and encourage different types of interactions between teaching staff and students. When the aim of providing the discussion forum is to support collaborative learning, construction of knowledge for the student becomes the focus of the forum. In this case the discussion may be student-centred with very little contribution from the teaching staff, or staff may assume a more significant role as mentors, facilitating the learning process by posing questions to initiate discussion amongst the students. Alternately, staff may take a very active role with greater focus on student-staff interactions. In this case staff provide feedback to students to encourage learning and allow them to solve their own problems. With the construction of knowledge as the focus, the type of feedback to the students as verification or elaboration becomes of central concern (Jang, Kim, & Baek, 2001). This type of feedback facility is important in the distance learning or tutorial environment with question and answer styles of interactions (Ramakrishnan, 1999). The two-way interaction enables the teacher to obtain information about an individual student's learning, however it does not necessarily provide information to the teacher about problems that may need to be addressed in that learning environment.
Critical to the success of discussion forums is student participation. However, students often show reluctance to join in on-line discussion, preferring to passively browse and read rather than actively contribute postings (Oliver, 2002). There are various methods used to encourage participation. McLoughlin and Luca (1999), when working with students in a team based environment, make it compulsory for students to make postings to a weekly WebCT on-line forum. This provides a learning environment where participants "share knowledge, discuss ideas and contribute to each other’s understandings of important issues" (p. 220). Taking a different approach, Nanlohy and Munns (2000) describe an asynchronous discussion board in a Web-based learning community in which lecturers attempt to create conditions for students to take ownership of their learning. Lecturers provide two different mechanisms for discussion. They have developed both an on-line tutorial and a free chat space, minimising their own contributions to the free chat but initiating topic probes on the on-line tutorial discussion. Barnes (1997) offers students anonymity in a discussion forum to encourage a wide body of students to participate in analysis and criticism. He thus acknowledges their right to ask questions without fear of consequences.
Another purpose for which discussion forums may be used is as a mechanism for students to give feedback to staff. Discussion forums provide the means for staff to obtain continual information about a subject, enabling resolution of issues immediately rather than after completion of the semester. This type of facility provides students with a voice and a forum for expressing concerns. Anonymity may be provided to ensure that reserved students are able to discuss issues in a public forum without identification (Lowder & Hagan, 1999). Nanlohy and Munns (2000) however, argue that the main disadvantage of anonymity in discussion forums is that it "has the potential to encourage negative or irresponsible use" (p. 3). When allowing free use of such a facility it is important that students behave with an appropriate level of responsibility.
A Web-based asynchronous discussion forum was developed by a staff member in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) of Monash University, and introduced into several undergraduate subjects in 1997 (Hagan, 1997; Lowder, 1997). The impetus for this development came partly from a workshop titled “Computer-supported cooperative work” (Brugge & Houghton, 1996) which led some staff to consider ways to introduce student interaction in the computer-supported subject environment and turn it into a cooperative learning environment. The facility known as Anonymous Feedback was provided to enable students to offer comments or discuss subject content, subject structure, and any issues arising during semester. In addition the facility was seen as "a place to encourage further learning" (p. 151), particularly as many questions not asked in lectures or tutorials could be asked in the forum. Anonymity of postings was provided to encourage students to use it freely without revealing their identity (Lowder & Hagan, 1999).
Teaching staff who have chosen to provide Anonymous Feedback for their students find that the management of this facility impacts on their time, in some cases dramatically. The number of postings made to the facility varies across subjects. An impressionistic view in some subjects is that a high proportion of the students use Anonymous Feedback. However, due to the anonymity of postings, it is impossible to form an accurate picture of student use. Is it used intensively by just a few students or widely by many? In 1999, Lowder and Hagan (1999) suggested that arriving at work in the morning to 10 feedback postings awaiting replies could be overwhelming. Three years later this number has increased substantially, and last year, in one extreme case, more than 100 messages were posted on one weekend. Recently, concerns have been raised by some staff about unrealistic expectations that students have of staff in terms of their responsiveness to postings on Anonymous Feedback. This has led to questions being asked about how best to handle the demands of this popular facility.
A further problem has arisen with the use of Anonymous Feedback. With the protection of anonymity, postings have sometimes been critical and harsh on lecturing and tutoring staff (Lowder & Hagan, 1999). This has, at times, had a demoralising effect on staff. Once again, however, because of the anonymity of the facility, it is not possible to determine how widely these views are held.
The purpose of this study was to gather information about students’ usage of Anonymous Feedback with the aim of establishing a picture of the extent of its use. In addition the study aimed to establish students’ perceptions of its usefulness as a help facility and its effectiveness as a feedback mechanism for staff. A further stage of this study will investigate the staff view of these issues. An intended outcome of this investigation will be the establishment of guidelines for staff for the effective use of this facility in its dual role as a help facility and feedback mechanism.
| Subject Code | Name | Year Level | Number of Respondents | Response Rate |
| CSE1203 | Programming 2 with Java | 1 | 86 | 42.0% |
| CSE1434 | Web Development with Java | 1 | 35 | 31.5% |
| CSE2201 | Software Engineering Practice | 2 | 44 | 31.9% |
| CSE2203 | IT Project Management | 2 | 76 | 37.3% |
| CSE2302 | Operating Systems | 2 | 69 | 31.3% |
| CSE3420 | Developing Graphical WWW Applications in Java | 3 | 39 | 33.3% |
| CSE5230 | Data Mining | Postgraduate | 8 | 42.1% |
| CSE9000 | Foundataions of Programming | Graduate | 77 | 56.5% |
The Anonymous Feedback facility in each subject was linked from the subject Web page, therefore it was important to determine how often students accessed this resource. Most students accessed the Web page weekly (36.6%) or twice weekly (40.7%), and only one student claimed to have never accessed the subject Web page.
The students’ frequency of access of Anonymous Feedback is shown in
Table 3. The most common access was weekly, and it is interesting to note
that 78.7% of the students claimed they had used the facility during the
semester.
| Subject Code | Number of Postings | Enrolment | Postings Per Student |
| CSE1203 | 567 | 207 | 2.7 |
| CSE1434 | 423 | 111 | 3.8 |
| CSE2201 | 524 | 138 | 3.8 |
| CSE2203 | 611 | 204 | 3.0 |
| CSE2302 | 468 | 220 | 2.1 |
| CSE3420 | 1104 | 117 | 9.4 |
| CSE5230 | 42 | 19 | 2.2 |
| CSE9000 | 422 | 138 | 3.1 |
| Frequency | Anonymous Feedback Access |
| Never | 21.3% |
| Monthly | 22.2% |
| Weekly | 28.9% |
| Twice weekly | 19.9% |
| At least daily | 7.6% |
Table 4 shows that only a small percentage of students accessed Anonymous
Feedback with the intention of making a posting, however when the students
were asked to nominate the numbers of posting they had made during the
semester, it showed that 67.1% of the users of Anonymous Feedback had made
postings. If we consider this as a percentage of all the students then
52.9% of the students in the survey had made at least one posting to Anonymous
Feedback during the semester.
| Subject | Browsing
% |
Read postings
% |
Make a posting
% |
Check response
% |
| CSE1203 | 26.4 | 47.2 | 7.0 | 19.4 |
| CSE1434 | 37.9 | 34.5 | 6.8 | 20.7 |
| CSE2201 | 18.2 | 39.4 | 3.0 | 39.4 |
| CSE2203 | 28.3 | 48.3 | 3.4 | 20.0 |
| CSE2302 | 12.2 | 61.0 | 7.3 | 19.5 |
| CSE3420 | 17.6 | 58.8 | 0 | 20.6 |
| CSE5230 | 14.3 | 57.1 | 0 | 28.6 |
| CSE9000 | 12.3 | 56.1 | 7.0 | 24.6 |
| Overall | 21.6 | 50.1 | 5.1 | 22.8 |
Of the students who posted to Anonymous Feedback, 80% made six or fewer
postings for the whole semester and 40% made only one or two postings.
In a couple of extreme cases students claimed to have posted more than
ten postings. The most frequent type of posting was for seeking help with
assignment work as shown in Table 5. This was consistent across all subjects
and more than half the students made a posting for this purpose.
| Type of Posting | Percentage |
| Subject administration question | 22.6 |
| Seeking assignment help | 50.1 |
| Seeking other help | 18.9 |
| Comment on subject | 18.0 |
| Responding to posting | 16.6 |
| Other | 7.7 |
| Type of Assistance | Mean of Usefulness Rating | SD |
| Anonymous Feedback | 4.53 | 1.60 |
| Help Desk | 4.00 | 1.96 |
| Tutor | 4.56 | 2.00 |
| Lecturer | 4.10 | 1.85 |
| Other students | 5.33 | 1.52 |
| Other people | 3.46 | 2.02 |
Of particular interest in this study was the type of usage students were making of Anonymous Feedback. When the feedback facility was introduced in 1997, its intended purpose was to provide an asynchronous facility for student and staff interactions and was not intended to be an on-line help desk. However this study showed that the primary use of Anonymous Feedback was for seeking assistance with assignment and class work. As an indication of this, the most common reason for making a posting was to seek help with assignment work with more than half the students (50.1%) having posted requests for this type of assistance. Far fewer students (18%) made postings to give feedback to teaching staff or make reflective comments on other aspects of their work. It seems that Anonymous Feedback has evolved from its original intended purpose as an on-line discussion forum in a cooperative and collaborative environment, to become more like a competing environment with students demanding attention from the teaching staff. More than half the students (67%) claimed they had made postings during the semester. The mean number of postings per student ranged from 2.1 to 3.8 across the subjects in the study, except for one extreme case where a subject recorded 9.4 postings per student. With this volume of active participation, Anonymous Feedback is now at times unmanageable, with students expecting instant response especially before examinations or assessment tasks are due.
The Anonymous Feedback facility has evolved to become a push-model for directing questions anonymously from the students’ end to target teaching staff. A tendency with some students is to bombard a series of questions in quick succession, demonstrating a lack of reflection on their work and suggesting that these students do not have an effective learning strategy.
However, students showed a high level of satisfaction with Anonymous Feedback. They indicated that they found it more useful than the physical Help Desk, which provides face-to-face individual assistance from teaching staff at set times during each day. The students’ open-ended comments in the survey indicated that the lack of constraints of time and place is a factor in their preference for Anonymous Feedback. This confirms an impressionistic view that although most subjects provide the Help Desk service, many students show a preference for obtaining help on-line. From an administration point of view, the Help Desk is a difficult service to operate effectively. At times the Help Desk is underused, with no students in attendance, and at other times, there are long queues of students seeking assistance.
In determining the usefulness of Anonymous Feedback to students it is important to look at the overall picture of how they are using the facility. The most obvious indicator of use is the volume of postings, however this amounts to only a small proportion of its total use. Most of the accesses (95.9%) were to read, browse or check responses to postings, indicating that there was a high level of passive access to the facility. Similar results were found by Nanlohy and Munns (2000) in their analysis of student use of an on-line discussion space. Although most accesses to Anonymous Feedback did not involve active participation they were often useful experiences for the students. One of the main reasons students gave for not making a posting was that they had no need because the question had been answered in a previous posting.
This study showed that the way students currently use Anonymous Feedback is different from the original intention of the teaching staff who first introduced it. The students indicated that they considered Anonymous Feedback had more value as an on-line help facility than the original purpose of providing feedback to staff. However, the popularity of Anonymous Feedback has become a burden on many teaching staff. What is needed is a strategy to facilitate a balanced outcome of effective student use and a manageable workload for staff. The shifting focus to on-line learning in tertiary education programs indicates that it may be timely to consider explicitly allocating tutors to resource Anonymous Feedback and consequently reducing the time allocated at the Help Desk. In defining this direction, there must be clear guidelines established for students and teaching staff. For example, it is clearly inappropriate to send a file to Anonymous Feedback asking for help to debug a programming assignment. It is more appropriate in such cases for a student to visit the Help Desk facility to step through the problem with the tutor. Developing a strategy for the effective management of this facility will add value to the learning and educational experience.
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