Online Discussion Forum: What tutors and they do it? An analysis of Management Mathematics course and community of inquiry concept

• Main Author: Ng, Richard
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: LC Special aspects of education; LG Individual institutions (Asia. Africa)
• Online Access: http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/199/1/online_discussion.pdf; http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/199/
• Institution: Open University Malaysia

Using the Online Discussion Monitoring software, an analysis was conducted on the online discussion forum for a mathematics course involving 34 tutors and 1350 learners of Open University Malaysia enrolled in the January 2008 semester. The contents of four tutors selected randomly from this forum were then analyzed using the concept derived from Community of Inquiry (COI) Model to find the teaching, social and cognitive presence. The forum contents of four other courses from the business faculty were also analyzed and a comparison was made. The results obtained showed that most participants in the mathematics course tend to be active within the first two tutorials irrespective of whether the tutors are active participant or not. The COI score obtained for the mathematics course indicated that the teaching and cognitive presence is low compared to reading courses. (Author's abstract)