Beyond a participation focus

Abstract

Sustaining participant engagement within collaborative online learning environments has proved problematic in a range of educational settings. It is not surprising then, that much of the literature around collaborative online learning has pointed to a pressing need to stimulate levels of participation and engagement. The underlying assumption seemingly being that increased participation will, in and of itself, lead to better learning outcomes within online environments. This paper argues that being overly concerned about participation and enjoyment levels may result in approaches that, at best, promote shallow forms of constructivism, rather than affording opportunity for deep knowledge building. The study reported in this paper draws on a body of research that has shown that levels of participation are inconsequential to the quality of knowledge building that occurs. Thus, when working with online groups there is a greater need to scaffold for the quality of interaction and output rather than the quantity of interaction.