“You’re breaking up …”

Responding with integrity to the student voice in asynchronous online discussions

Abstract

Recent years have seen the increasing integration of asynchronous online discussions, often embodying a collaborationist, constructivist pedagogical paradigm, into on- and off-campus postgraduate courses. This paper uses data from published research, a series of course evaluations and one study by the authors into the development of a community of practice to highlight the tensions between pedagogy and student expectations in this context, and explore possible biases in existing research methodologies. These, taken together, may mean that educators and researchers are not clearly hearing student voices when they interact online or report their experiences of asynchronous online discussions.