Abstract:

This study explores how online forums discussion can be incorporated to support knowledge acquisition and how they can help teachers to monitoring learning outcomes. It also develops the topic of online discussion as one of the most significant learning activities in Teacher Education in Physical Education (Graduate Programme at Sport Faculty of Porto University).
It can be argued that one of the most beneficial tools of online learning is the discussion forums. These discussions allows student-student and student-teacher interactions to occur. Such interactions are critical to learning as learners extend their own understanding when they perceive a problem from multiple perspectives and shared understanding (Bruffee, 1993; Duffy & Jonassen, 1991). The concept of Peer-learning makes sense in this context.
Online discussion can occur synchronously (same-time) or asynchronously (different time). Some studies tend to agree that asynchronous discussion offers more educational benefits, because the delayed response in asynchronous conferencing encourages an in-depth reflection (Newman, Johnson, Webb, & Cochrane, 1997). Most often, feedback from teachers and peers can also be more efficient than face-to-face meeting.
The paper describes tasks for teachers while monitoring online discussions, as well as discussions initiated during the course. This study reports at 2007/08 academic year, and data were collected from the on-line forums discussion of the 143 students in Scholar Pedagogy courses. The discussion topics are based on the subjects matter presented by teachers and other students in the face-to-face courses. All topics of Forum Discussions received 408 messages posted and 3235 visits. All messages posted were monitorized by teachers and some online discussions were content-analysed in order to understand the students’ perceptions about some subject matters. This operation was important because it gave feedback about how students were learning some contents, and permit teachers to explain them again in face-to-face courses or in on-line component. The dimension of monitoring learning outcomes is an important part of assessment, and provides crucial elements to teachers know how to conduct the teaching process.
This study suggest that participation in such an activity like forums discussion increases students’ understanding of the learning matter, develops learning process like creating messages to generate ideas, form judgments and answers, and develop critical arguments about of other students’ and teachers posts. Also, it helps teachers to perceive how their students learn. Studying interaction in online courses from the perspective of learning and with a pedagogical focus is important and may help to develop new strategies for Teacher Education.

Keywords:

teacher education, forum discussions, blended-learning.