Evaluating threaded discussion forum activity: faculty and student perspectives on categories of activity

Although the threaded discussion forum is widely used to support a variety of course requirements, there is little understanding of what instructors and students perceive as essential categories of online participation. There has been considerable discussion in the literature on the theoretical foundation for discourse analysis of discussion forum activity, but little research has been done to determine if the environment itself influences the perceptions of participation at a categorical level. This paper extends the research into SCAFFOLD (scale for forums/online discussion assessment) presented at the FIE 2004 conference by addressing the following questions: 1) Do faculty and students develop the same description of the forum interaction when using SCAFFOLD? 2) Do the same major categories of interaction emerge for both faculty and student evaluators? 3) What are the strengths and weaknesses of SCAFFOLD as an instrument for promoting feedback on discussion forum assignments