Selecting two project groups to study.

From the survey conducted with students who chose the VRS (Study 1a), and the student reviews of the course, we know that the student experience of group work online can impact negatively on their overall appraisal of the module. However, from practitioner experience, and the occasional student review, we know that it is not always the case. Therefore it would be

preferable if the project groups chosen for in depth study reflect both types of experience, negative and positive.

When choosing two project groups to study there was the potential for researcher bias. Over several presentations of the course my attention had been drawn to several groups where interpersonal issues were particularly problematic. Such knowledge could lead to bias towards extreme examples of problematic groups which is not the aim of this thesis. There are other

potential sources of bias, preconceived and anecdotal views about the style and competence of individual teachers and about which type of project is

likely to cause conflict amongst group members. Furthermore, the module assessment is a key milestone for students so that a researcher observing the group during the presentation of the module could have unintended

consequences.

However, there is a full record of the textual exchanges which means that the developmental nature of the group can be studied retrospectively,

the project groups can be observed without intrusion. For all these reasons it was decided to select project groups by making further use of the survey data, described in Chapter 3 which included the following open question

Please supply any additional comments that you would like to make.

The responses that students offered to the open question were analysed as follows. Any emotional words used by students when they responded to the open question were classified into one of six categories denoting a primary emotion, fear, surprise, joy, sadness, anger, love, using a scheme for emotion classification (Parrott, 2001). This scheme is hierarchically organised and classifies emotion terms at three levels, with the secondary and tertiary level derived from the primary level; it forms a thesaurus of emotion words. Using this thesaurus each occurrence of an emotion word in the open responses of students was noted. By categorising each emotion word according to the primary emotion from which it was derived a profile was constructed for each of four cohorts as illustrated in Figure 4.1 (four distinct cohorts of students had

bee Tha Fig The coh des of ‘f imp that en identifie at study us gure 4-1 Stud ese profiles hort that de scriptors, C fear ‘ desc plication for t determine d in a rese sed data fro

dent reports s were the escribed th Cohort 3 wa criptors Coh r education ed the cho earch study om the sam s of emotion n used to s eir experie as targeted hort 4 was n of the mo oice of coho y previousl me presen n and group VRS select two ence by us d as one g targeted a otivational orts. From ly reported tation of th p work expe contrastin ing the hig roup. Base as the seco conseque a psychob d (Robinson he VRS as rience when g project g ghest propo ed on the h ond group. nce of thes biological p n, 2010)). this thesis n undertakin groups. The ortion of ‘jo high incide . It is the se emotion perspective s. ng a e oy’ ence ns e

joy is associated with a motivation to approach (engage) while fear is

associated with a motivation to withdraw (disengage). Significantly, from the research published in 2010 we know that the students in Cohort 3 reported the highest mean rating for appraisal of the questions about the lack of ‘visible’ information about others (the absence of identity cues was positively appraised) and their experience of interacting with other forum members was positive, whereas Cohort 4 had the highest mean score for negative

experience yet was matched to Cohort 3 for attitude to the lack of ‘visible’ information (Robinson, 2010). Taken together these two factors, namely, the open question account of emotional experience and membership of an appropriate cohort, presented the best opportunity of selecting two project groups that would be representative of contrasting student socio-emotional experience.

By identifying a target student from each cohort, the sample project groups for the thesis were chosen. The target student had to fulfil two criteria: they had agreed to their responses being quoted for research purposes, and they had responded to the survey using their institutional email account. The latter made it possible to identify which project group the student had belonged to. Thus two project groups emerged that reflected the relational space of the group as experienced by at least one member of each (since the aim for Studies 2 and 3 is to study the relational space of the ‘group as a unit’ it is not necessary for other members of the group to similarly appraise the

(student experience negative), which had seven members, all female and a male teacher and the Mandeville group (student experience positive), which had 5 members, all female and a female teacher (approximately 81% of the students enrolled on the course were female).

This method of sampling is purposive; the prime aim is not to sample for proportionality but to identify forums that would be appropriate for observing how social presence, teaching presence, style of communicating in a text based forum and the appropriation of the technology might be associated with contrasting retrospective accounts of experience. Although there is no

guarantee that the emotional experience of the target student is

representative of the group it is a similar method of sampling to that adopted by (Barron, 2003). The research aim of the Barron study, to characterise the social and cognitive factors that contribute productive interactions, is not dissimilar to the aim of this study. From a possible 12 groups Barron chose two groups that were successful and two that were not. Success was measured at a group level and therefore there was no guarantee that the collaborative learning was successfully/unsuccessfully experienced by each individual member. Nevertheless the microanalysis of group interactions undertaken by Barron led to some useful portraits that characterise the differences between successful and unsuccessful groups (Barron, 2003) as reviewed in Exemplar 2, Chapter 2, Section 2.2.2 ; a finding that supports the use of purposive sampling for this thesis.

4.3 Study 2

Content analysis is a popular method for researchers who study social learning online. It involves devising and applying a system for categorising message content, or parts of a message; a measuring instrument for the quantitative analysis of the content of forum messages. In order to maximize validity, the method used for collecting the data and for constructing the content analysis instrument should be strongly aligned with a theoretical framework and with the aims of the learning event under study (Wever, Schellens, Valcke, & Keer, 2006). The content analysis approach for Study 2 meets these two criteria as follows:

The development of a set of content analysis instruments for the COI framework was strongly influenced by previous research and has been confirmed more recently using large-scale surveys with students drawn from a range of educational settings.

A stated aim of the thesis is to provide support for teachers. The validity of the COI method for measuring social presence has been investigated by (Rourke et al., 1999) who reported a study where two independent observers coded the transcripts from two forums; the findings were consistent with intuitive impression of the researchers; the method has face validity. Therefore it could be useful to have a social presence profile available to teachers while the group work is taking place.

There is another reason for choosing this instrument: it contains a category ‘Group cohesiveness’ that was identified as important group process when reviewing the four Exemplars of group work in Chapter 2.

4.4 Measuring presence (social and teaching) using the