The effects of teacher' feedback: a case study of an online discussion forum in Higher Education

Abstract

Despite its importance, the effectsof feedback in onlineenvironments has not been widely assessed; nor is there any consensus on how it should be measured. The aim of this exploratory study is to analyse theeffects of teacher feedback during the development of an online discussion forum. Over a three-week period, the participants (14 university students and their tutor) engaged in a virtual debate on the use of Wikipedia for academic purposes, using the Knowledge Forum platform (participants made 328 posts in total). Based on characteristics of online learning environments, we developed a multidimensional model to study feedback and its effects during online interaction. The results show the main effects of the teacher's feedback both on the students' discussion about learning topics -chain effect and cluster effect-and on the rules of participation in the debate. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and practical implications of these results.