Share Paper: Online Discussions: The Effect of Having Two Deadlines

  1. Michael Herrick, University of Hawaii, United States
  2. Meng-Fen Grace Lin, University of Hawaii, United States
  3. Charlotte Huei-Wen, University of Hawaii, Taiwan
Wednesday, March 9 2:00-2:30 PM Oaklands

Abstract: Discussion forums are the heart of asynchronous online courses; many factors go into their design. After witnessing students delay in making required discussion board posts until just before the deadline, the authors postulated that a two-deadline solution, one in which initial responses were due days before peer comments, would serve to better incite dialogue among the students. The discussion forums of 5 groups, 3 with one-deadline and 2 with two-deadlines, were analyzed quantitatively; number of posts, response level, number of days before the deadline, and number of words were used as metrics. Findings revealed statistically significant differences between the one- ...