Write a 250-300 word summary of “Broadening the Notion of Participation in
Online Discussions article below. Examining Patterns in Learners’ Online
Listening Behaviors.” Include a discussion of the research problem, questions,
methods, findings, and implications discussed by the authors.
While a great deal of research has studied the messages students contribute to electronic discussion
forums, productive participation in online learning conversations requires more than just making posts.
One important pre-condition for productive inter-activity and knowledge construction is engagement
with the posts contributed by others. In this study, these actions (how learners interact with the existing
discussion; which posts they attend to, when, and how) are conceptualized as “online listening
behaviors” and are studied in the context of a large undergraduate business course taught in a blended
format. Clickstream data was collected for 96 participants from 3 week-long online discussions to solve
organizational behavior challenges in groups of 10–13. Listening behaviors accounted for almost threequarters of the time learners spent in the discussions, and cluster analysis identified three distinct
patterns of behavior: (1) Superficial Listeners, Intermittent Talkers; (2) Concentrated Listeners,
Integrated Talkers; and (3) Broad Listeners, Reflective Talkers. The clusters differed in the depth,
breadth, temporal contiguity, and reflectivity of their listening as well as in their patterns of speaking. An
illustrative case study of how the listening behaviors were enacted by one student from each cluster
over time was used to deepen the characterization and interpretation of each cluster. The results
indicate that online listening is a complex phenomenon and a substantial component of students’
participation in online discussions. Findings are compared to the previous work on student learning
approaches and implications for practice and future research are discussed.
Reference
Wise, J., Alyssa Friend Speer, J. Marbouti, F. Hsiao, & Y.-T. (2013). Strategies for successful writing: A rhetoric,
research guide, reader, and handbook. Pearson. The article was published in Instructional Science in March
2013 and has the volume number 41 and issue number 2, with pages 323-343.