Abstract:

Assessment via and of participation in collaborative online forums is becoming a key feature of many Higher Education (HE) modules, including those of The Open University (OU). One second year undergraduate OU Social Science module, ‘DD206: The Uses of Social Sciences’, uses an assessed collaborative forum, wherein students work together in tutor group sub-groups to select and comment on resources provided by the module team, as well as provide resources themselves, contributing 15% towards a piece of assessment.

At first glance participation in this forum seems good; most students complete the collaborative forum task and most pass. However, it is also clear that most students post only a small number of replies in the collaborative forum, the main reason students give for completing it is simply to gain the mark, and many do not see the value in collaborative forums. This suggests that participation for many is simply a means to an end, which in turn suggests the value of collaborative forums is of question.

This article studies participation data from one presentation of this module, as well as examining student and tutor feedback gained via questionnaires, to examine this issue in detail, before making suggestions about how to increase the value of assessed collaborative forums so students both participate more and gain more than just a mark.

Keywords:

Collaboration, participation, forums, student experience, assessment, value.