Patterns of participation in online courses

• This paper focuses on participation patterns of written utterances in online courses. Patterns concern how initiation, turn taking and the maintaining of a conversation are constituted in different speech genres. The contextual frame is in general participation in education and specifically participation in online courses. In this context the participants rarely meet face-to-face. Their participation in the online course is thus dependent on utterances written in an online conversation. The purpose of this paper is partly to describe the participation patterns of teachers and participants in online courses as speech genres, and partly to discuss the constitutive and maintaining dynamic aspects of these patterns. The online conversations have been investigated with a frame including conversational analysis and speech genres. The theory of speech genre has been used to put conversations into context. Utterances by participants and teachers are understood as interplay between speakers and the surrounding context. This theory connects speech genres used by the participants in other settings, including content and authority similar to everyday conversations between friends. Conversational analysis, including different conversational sequences in education, contributes to the study by revealing ideas and conditions concerning conversation in formal education. For example the way IRE-sequences, and the following steering of content and structures, contributes to maintaining an asymmetric balance of power.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

participation

online course

distance education

Education

Pedagogik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)