Scaling Interaction: Examining Differences in Teacher Discourse as Asynchronous Online Professional Development Scales Up

• In Event: Technology in Teaching and Teacher Education

Abstract

With an increasing number of teachers accessing professional development (PD) asynchronously online, researchers must understand how participant group size affects the nature of valuable peer interactions in discussion forums. To examine this issue, we analyzed occurrences of transactivity (i.e., learners building off of each other’s reasoning) in the discussion forums of an online professional development as it scaled up from a small participant pool (8 participants) to a larger second iteration (91 participants). Our analysis indicated that transactivity was significantly higher in the second iteration during discussions around pedagogy and implementation, suggesting a larger participant pool may have facilitated this form of collaborative discourse. No significant difference was found in the discussion following other prompts across the iterations.

Authors

• Thomas Richman, The University of Pennsylvania

• Susan A. Yoon, University of Pennsylvania

• Amin Marei, The University of Pennsylvania

• Katherine M Miller, University of Pennsylvania