Article Summary
Article Summary
With the increase in online courses, along came an increase in the drop out rates versus the traditional sit-in environment. During this study, valuable information was offered to increase student success and minimize drop out rates. There needs to be communication among peers and instructor to have success in online courses.
A group of students from the University of Pretoria, were enrolled in a Masters program, and their online activities were tracked for 8 weeks, by a program called Learning management (LMS) track. The LMS tracking tool was able to offer information on “students’ blog postings, 1615 discussions posts, an online quiz, and examination essays” (Nagel, Blignaut, & Cronje, 2009, p, 41). Through their examination, they were able to categorize “three stratifications of students” (Nagel, et al, 2009, 45) and their traits. The first stratification group was the fail grade, which rarely posted, hardly collaborated with their peers, searched very little, rarely replied to his online community, or provided no feedback. This caused frustration among other peers that were assigned to their group project, because they never participated. As for the pass grade group, they were the average student who just did the minimum requirements to pass their course, neither too little nor too much. Finally, the distinction group was the most active in all of categories mentioned above. They not only participated in all components of the online courses put they offered valuable feedback to their peers during their forum discussions.
References
Nagel, L., Blignaut, A. S., & Cronje, J. C. (2009). Read-only participants: a case for student communication in online classes. Interactive Learning Environments, 17(1), 37-51.
With the increase in online courses, along came an increase in the drop out rates versus the traditional sit-in environment. During this study, valuable information was offered to increase student success and minimize drop out rates. There needs to be communication among peers and instructor to have success in online courses.
A group of students from the University of Pretoria, were enrolled in a Masters program, and their online activities were tracked for 8 weeks, by a program called Learning management (LMS) track. The LMS tracking tool was able to offer information on “students’ blog postings, 1615 discussions posts, an online quiz, and examination essays” (Nagel, Blignaut, & Cronje, 2009, p, 41). Through their examination, they were able to categorize “three stratifications of students” (Nagel, et al, 2009, 45) and their traits. The first stratification group was the fail grade, which rarely posted, hardly collaborated with their peers, searched very little, rarely replied to his online community, or provided no feedback. This caused frustration among other peers that were assigned to their group project, because they never participated. As for the pass grade group, they were the average student who just did the minimum requirements to pass their course, neither too little nor too much. Finally, the distinction group was the most active in all of categories mentioned above. They not only participated in all components of the online courses put they offered valuable feedback to their peers during their forum discussions.
References
Nagel, L., Blignaut, A. S., & Cronje, J. C. (2009). Read-only participants: a case for student communication in online classes. Interactive Learning Environments, 17(1), 37-51.
References: Nagel, L., Blignaut, A. S., & Cronje, J. C. (2009). Read-only participants: a case for student communication in online classes. Interactive Learning Environments, 17(1), 37-51.