On the final survey, I asked students to describe their level of participation in the discussion board Questions thread, yet I discovered that more than half of the respondents misinterpreted the question to reflect instead on the required weekly discussions. This misinterpretation led me to wonder if I had placed enough emphasis over the course of the semester on the co-teaching opportunity inherent to that thread. Those who did address the Questions thread in survey responses, however, indicated very little participation, in line with the number of posts by the same small group of students over the course of sixteen weeks:
- “I didn't really use the Questions thread, but I can see how it may have helped others.”
- “It was very helpful at times. You can always get a response in just a short amount of time.”
- “I had some participation. I would answer questions I knew if it looked like it would be a while before the professor would answer. The difference between posting to the questions thread and emailing the professor would be if I thought the question would benefit others.”
- “I did not post questions, glanced at it briefly, but for the most part I did not require help.”
- “I think I was the main contributor in the questions thread. It was one of the quickest ways to get an answer from our instructor.”
These responses, when combined with the Questions thread data, clearly suggest that this aspect of civic participation within the course was not fully realized. Comparing the sheer number of emails to which I responded to the contributions to this discussion board thread, I wonder if
- students simply felt more comfortable emailing me directly rather that posting questions to the public forum
- students did not remember to post questions to the discussion thread despite my reminder in the weekly announcement
- students associated email with asking a question of the instructor in the traditional classroom
Although I did on two separate occasions ask for permission to post a student's email question and my response to the Questions thread since the information would be useful to other students, I did not make this duplication a habit since it was often time-consuming and/or did not immediately occur to me.
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