An exploration of help-giving in online college course discussion forums

Academic help-giving behavior—the act of responding to a student’s request for help—can provide support to those struggling with course material and thus can play an important role in learning. However, in online learning environments, students often struggle to receive the academic support they need to succeed due to the low levels of communication that characterize such settings. As more courses begin to use online platforms, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing need for research that furthers our understanding of how students can effectively help one another in online settings. This research aimed to contribute to work on academic help-giving via two investigations of helping behavior in the online course discussion forum context. The first study used a grounded theory approach to determine what students find helpful in replies to requests for help posted to online course discussion forums. Findings revealed several ways in which discussion forum posts can be helpful for struggling students. The second study used linear mixed model analysis to examine the relationship between sense of belonging to one’s class and the perceived helpfulness of discussion forum help-giving replies. Findings indicated that students with a lower sense of class belonging than their peers found help-giving replies to be, on average, less helpful for their learning. Generally, these results point to the importance of considering how message characteristics and student characteristics may both influence the effectiveness of help-giving interactions in online settings.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Jeng, Amos

Contributors dc:contributor

• Perry, Michelle
• Bosch, Nigel
• Ruedas-Gracia, Nidia

• help-giving
• discussion forums
• collaborative learning
• college student
• sense of belonging

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Amos Jeng

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115534

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115534