Identifying Social Presence in Student Discussions on Facebook and Canvas
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Identifying Social Presence in Student Discussions on Facebook and Canvas Monica Johannesen1 · Louise Mifsud1 · Leikny Øgrim1
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract This study examines student discussion fora in a Master’s programme. Previous student evaluations of the course highlighted the students’ dissatisfaction with the technology chosen for communication and recommended the use of Facebook instead. In this article, we raise the following question: ‘How do various digital discussion fora engage students in academic discussions?’ The collected data material consists of student evaluation reports and dialogues on Facebook and Canvas. The data were gathered from two courses that used Facebook or Canvas as their primary communication technology. In analysing these interactions, we identified several categories: social issues, academic discussions, practical issues, information flow, teacher information, and crossover discussions. The findings, which address the interplay between the social and the material nature of communication in academic discussions, are analysed from a sociomaterial perspective. Our conclusions indicate that the sociomaterial nature of the various discussion fora influences the students’ social presences, which consequently influence the academic discussions. Keywords Facebook · Canvas · Social presence · Sociomaterial · Dialogic learning
1 Introduction The research presented in this article focusses on student discussion fora in a Master’s programme in technology-enhanced learning. Previous course evaluations highlighted the students’ dissatisfaction with the chosen virtual learning environment (VLE) and their * Louise Mifsud [email protected] Monica Johannesen [email protected] Leikny Øgrim [email protected] 1
OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
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preference to use a social network service (SNS). One group of students even refused to use the VLE for discussions and used Facebook instead (Johannesen et al. 2016a, b; Johannesen and Øgrim 2015), an action that can be described as a student mutiny (Johannesen et al. 2016). To meet the students’ demands, we designed two courses, one using Facebook and the other using Canvas, a new VLE. When designing the courses, we questioned how the different digital discussion fora engaged students in the academic discussions that pertained to the course literature. Consequently, we examined the discussions that took place on the two platforms over the course of one semester. The remainder of this article is organised as follows: In the next section, we review the research related to the use of VLEs and SNSs in higher education and present the concepts we used for the analyses. Then, we present the data, discuss our findings, and propose several educational implications.
2 Related Research A considerable amount of research has examined the use of VLEs in higher education. VLEs refer generally to learning management systems such as Fronter,
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