Strengthening Social Networks in Online Discussion Forums to Facilitate Help Seeking for Solving Problems

Help seeking is regarded as an important learning strategy that reflects students' metacognitive and domain-specific skills and knowledge. This study developed a proactive online discussion forum that strengthens social networks in an online discussion forum to facilitate help seeking for probl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducational Technology ＆ Society Vol. 21; no. 4; pp. 39 - 50
Main Authors Chao, Po-Yao, Lai, K. Robert, Liu, Chen-Chung, Lin, Hung-Ming
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Palmerston North International Forum of Educational Technology ＆ Society 01.10.2018
National Taiwan Normal University
International Forum of Educational Technology & Society
Subjects
Attitudes
Computer Mediated Communication
Dependent variables
ego network
Experimental Groups
Foreign Countries
Foreign Students
Full Length Articles
Graduate Students
Help Seeking
Learning Strategies
online discussion forum
online social network
Participation
Positive Attitudes
Problem Solving
Self Concept
Social Networks
Student Attitudes
Students
Vietnamese
Taiwan
Ego network
Help seeking
Online discussion forum
Online social network
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Summary:Help seeking is regarded as an important learning strategy that reflects students' metacognitive and domain-specific skills and knowledge. This study developed a proactive online discussion forum that strengthens social networks in an online discussion forum to facilitate help seeking for problem solving. This forum allowed students to proactively invite friends or potential experts to participate in problem solving. A quasi-experimental approach was conducted with a sample of 37 students. The students' behaviors of problem solving, ego network patterns of problem solving, and perceptions of help seeking were addressed as dependent variables to assess the effect of the proactive online discussion forum. The analysis results revealed that the students in the experimental group exhibited more frequent participation in problem solving, and showed more positive attitudes towards help seeking. The results also indicated that the experimental group demonstrated more in-depth participation patterns of ego networks. The findings provide some evidence for the effectiveness of the proactive online discussion forum in terms of promoting students' participation in problem solving and their attitudes towards help seeking.
ISSN:1176-3647
1436-4522
1436-4522