Department of Rural Human Biosciences, La Trobe Rural Health School, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia.
Anat Sci Educ. 2014 Jan-Feb;7(1):71-6. doi: 10.1002/ase.1376. Epub 2013 Jun 3.
Asynchronous online discussion forums are common in blended learning models and are popular with students. A previous report has suggested that participation in these forums may assist student learning in a gross anatomy subject but it was unclear as to whether more academically able students post more often or whether participation led to improved learning outcomes. This study used a path model to analyze the contribution of forum participation, previous academic ability, and student campus of enrolment to final marks in a multicampus gross anatomy course for physiotherapy students. The course has a substantial online learning management system (LMS) that incorporates asynchronous forums as a learning tool, particularly to answer learning objectives. Students were encouraged to post new threads and answer queries in threads started by others. The forums were moderated weekly by staff. Discussion forums were the most used feature of the LMS site with 31,920 hits. Forty-eight percent of the students posted at least once with 186 threads initiated by students and a total of 608 posts. The total number of posts made a significant direct contribution to final mark (P = 0.008) as did previous academic ability (P = 0.002). Although campus did not contribute to final mark, there was a trend for students at the campus where the course coordinator was situated to post more often than those at the other campus (P = 0.073). These results indicate that asynchronous online discussion forums can be an effective tool for improving student learning outcomes as evidenced by final marks in gross anatomy teaching.
异步在线讨论论坛在混合学习模式中很常见，并且深受学生欢迎。之前有一份报告表明，这些论坛的参与可能有助于学生学习大体解剖学课程，但不清楚是学习能力较强的学生更频繁地发帖，还是参与会导致学习成绩的提高。本研究使用路径模型分析了论坛参与度、先前的学术能力和学生入学校区对理疗学生多校区大体解剖课程最终成绩的贡献。该课程有一个庞大的在线学习管理系统（LMS），其中包括异步论坛作为学习工具，特别是用于回答学习目标。学生被鼓励发布新的主题并回答其他人发起的主题中的问题。论坛由工作人员每周进行管理。讨论论坛是 LMS 网站上使用最多的功能，有 31920 次点击量。48%的学生至少发布过一次，学生发起了 186 个主题，总共发布了 608 个帖子。帖子总数对最终成绩有显著的直接贡献（P=0.008），先前的学术能力也有显著的直接贡献（P=0.002）。尽管校区对最终成绩没有贡献，但课程协调员所在校区的学生比另一个校区的学生更倾向于经常发帖（P=0.073）。这些结果表明，异步在线讨论论坛可以成为提高学生学习成果的有效工具，这体现在大体解剖学教学的最终成绩上。
