Effects of awareness support on moderating multiple parallel E-discussions

Moderating multiple e-discussions at a time puts high demands on teachers as moderators. Therefore, to be able to provide effective moderation, teachers should be given adequate awareness support. We evaluated our e-moderation system called “Moderator’s Interface” comparing moderation with and without awareness support. Following a within subject design, our cases were two teachers who were asked to moderate discussions of their students and to choose and prepare a discussion topic compliant with the curriculum. Results indicate that additional awareness support was deliberately used during moderation when available. An analysis of data from the teachers’ answers to 120 questions and tasks indicates that in the awareness condition, both teachers performed better on the tasks as compared to moderating without awareness support. However, it could not be corroborated that teachers gained additional knowledge about the discussion solely from using the awareness support in absence of an external task. Moderating E-Discussions Research on supporting e-discussions has been a strong interest of the CSCL community (e.g. Kirschner, Buckingham Shum, & Carr, 2003). Existing e-discussion environments such as Belvedere (Suthers, 2003) and Digalo (Lotan-Kochan, 2006) offer a context in which learners can synchronously develop argumentation maps on a collaborative workspace. There has been a focus on facilitating learners’ to engage in synchronous ediscussions, specifically investigating ways to provide guidance to the learner. For example Schwarz and Glassner (Schwarz & Glassner, 2007) found that floor control and providing specific ontological argumentation types can be beneficial to reduce superficial, chat-like discussions. While these efforts help to sustain autonomous discussions between peers, they do not take into account the role of the teacher in classroom-based e-discussions. Supporting the role of the teacher during e-discussions in classrooms has been taken up only recently (De Groot et al., 2007). Especially when it comes to synchronous e-discussions (and possibly multiple discussion spaces), teachers need to be supported to effectively moderate the students’ flow of a discussion. Problems of E-Moderation Moderation during synchronous e-discussions puts high demands on a teacher. In a previous study on moderation investigating teachers’ moderation styles and strategies, we found that teachers have difficulties to moderate effectively. For example, results indicated that teachers rarely encouraged students to formulate arguments or pose scaffolding questions but rather gave feedback only with respect to the process and social level (Wichmann, Harrer, & Hoppe, 2007). According to Chi and colleagues (Chi, Siler, Jeoug, Yamauchi, & Hausmann, 2001) only scaffolding questions and informative feedback is beneficial and has a positive effect on students’ knowledge construction behavior. Interventions such as scaffolding questions and informative feedback require the teacher to evaluate the students’ actions in terms of content, process, and social behavior. On a content level, a teacher needs to be able to grasp the focus of a student’s contribution and monitor the content focus of the overall discussion. On a process level, teachers need to understand whether students engage in a critical style of argumentation. For instance, a student, who only contributes using affirming arguments, might need to be encouraged to critically reflect specific aspects in the discussion. Social behavior needs to be in focus of the teacher’s attention to intervene on time when for example a student stops contributing. While engaging in effective moderation turns out to be to be a general problem for teachers during discussions, a specific challenge derives from moderating multiple e-discussions at the same time. Concurrent moderation of multiple discussions requires the moderator to switch between discussions and to perform several tasks at once. A prerequisite for effective moderation (in form of posing scaffolding questions etc.) is the teachers’ understanding of the students’ activities during e-discussions. Especially when it comes to moderating multiple parallel discussions, teachers need to be supported handle the vast amount of information and to enable them to moderate a discussion effectively. The present research endeavor focuses on supporting teachers during moderations in terms of awareness support. Awareness Support during Moderation Awareness can be characterized as the understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for one’s own activity (Dourish & Bellotti, 1992). During the moderation of multiple parallel e-discussions, we believe that gaining awareness (an understanding of students’ activities) needs to be supported. Awareness information needs to be provided in terms of: a) content awareness b) process awareness and c) social awareness (De Groot et al., 2007). This awareness support is expected to enable teachers to effectively carry out tasks. On a content level, it should enable teachers to provide informative feedback to the students. On a process level, awareness support should provide a teacher with information on how far a discussion has advanced with respect to a planned workflow. With regard to social aspects, awareness support should help a teacher to identify strong and weak collaborators instantly. A general problem (Manuele, Valdeni de Lima, & Marcos, 2003) of providing additional information often results in the opposite effect: Instead of enabling a user to make deliberate choices, the additional information leads to a mental overload and hence to ineffective or no use at all. Therefore, awareness information needs to be pre-selected and smoothly integrated with the environment. The ARGUNAUT Approach The goal of the EC-funded ARGUNAUT project (IST-2005027728) was to provide a moderation component called “Moderator’s Interface”, which enables teachers to moderate multiple parallel e-discussions. The Moderator’s Interface allows the teacher to observe the development of the discussions via a Discussion Graph display. In addition, it offers awareness support and a remote intervention mechanism. Awareness support displays characteristics of a discussion in terms of content, process, and social aspects. Aspects related to content of students’ contributions is represented in a Contribution Sequence display consisting (see Table 1) of a chat-like table. Process-related aspects are represented in the User Activity display and the Ontology display. The User Activity display shows number and type (e.g. new contribution, new relation etc.) of contributions by each student. The Ontology display shows number of pro – arguments and counterarguments as well as contribution type (e.g. argument, question, comment etc.) per discussion space. Social behavior is represented in the display called user relations. This display offers a visualization of collaborative activity per student using a social network diagram, which visualizes the level of interaction between users. Table 1 : Types of awareness support Awareness Information about: Content Process Social Behavior Moderator’s Interface Awareness Support: Contribution Sequence User Activity, Ontology User relations