| As one of the most important cooperative learning activities in network learning,online discussion has been widely used to support the teaching practice of various online courses.It can break through the limitations of time and space,and provide learners with opportunities to express their ideas,communicate with peers,and realize knowledge construction.However,not all online discussions can be positive and there are many factors that limit this.As a key factor affecting the frequency of participation and interaction in the forum,the granularity of discussion organization is necessary to further explore its influence on the quality of online discussion.However,the quality of discussion depends to a large extent on the level of cognitive engagement and knowledge contribution of learners.Cognitive engagement reflects the cognitive effort of learners in the process of discussion,while knowledge contribution is an important reason for maintaining the continuity of discussion.Therefore,through quasi-experimental research,this paper designs two discussion organization methods based on community granularity and group granularity,and applies them in the course forum of Database Principles and Practice,to explore the level of cognitive engagement and knowledge contribution of learners under these two discussion methods.The course forum lasted for 16 weeks,and 892 posts were collected as experimental data for this study.On cognitive engagement measure,on the basis of the theoretical framework,this study,using the content analysis method to cognitive engagement behavior of the post code,and then with the help of epistemic network analysis method to explore learners in both cognitive engagement behavior patterns in the discussion of organizational size,and according to the differences in cognitive network excavated two organizations in the discussion of granularity learners’cognitive behavioral differences.For the measurement of knowledge contribution,this study first calculated the information content and information gain of learners in the two kinds of discussion granularity through the idea of information theory,and plotted the change trend curve of the amount of information on a topic respectively to depict the process of learners’ knowledge contribution in the discussion.In addition,the t-test method was used to compare the difference in the average information gain of learners’ posts under the two discussion methods.Through the analysis of the cognitive engagement and knowledge contribution of learners in the discussion process,this paper mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)From the results of cognitive engagement behavior analysis,the discussion organization based on group granularity is beneficial for learners to show higher levels of cognitive engagement behavior to some extent,such as construction behavior and interaction behavior.And learners granularity in the discussion of the team showed stronger on the material analysis,comparison and integration of behavior(CC)summarizes the connection behavior(AS),it shows that they may not be in the summary of knowledge limited to delete material information,to paraphrase the shallow level of processing,also pays attention to the operation of the material to consolidate,reasoning,and so on deep.The discussion organization based on community granularity is helpful for learners to generate more constructive explanatory behaviors.In addition,learners showed stronger connection between explanatory behavior(CE)--repetitive behavior(AR)and explanatory behavior(CE)--analysis,comparison and integration of materials(CC)under this discussion method.This means that in a community forum they may be more likely to repeatedly cite,repeat material content(AR),or analyze and integrate material(CC)to explain themselves(CE).However,learners showed less questioning behavior(CQ)in these two kinds of organizational granularity discussions.(2)From the results of the measurement of knowledge contribution,there are significant differences in the process of learners’ knowledge contribution in the two kinds of organizational granularity discussions.On the one hand,the variation trend of the amount of information on a topic is different.To some extent,this difference shows that the granularity of group discussion may be more helpful to promote the learners to reach a consensus on the topic.On the other hand,in the discussion of community granularity,the average information gain of learners is significantly greater than that of group granularity.(3)The results of cognitive engagement analysis based on ICAP framework can provide a new explanation for the measurement results of knowledge contribution based on information theory.The results of cognitive engagement analysis can provide some new references for understanding the reasons why learners’ average information gain in the discussion of community granularity is significantly greater than that of group granularity.These findings,on the one hand,can provide meaningful guidance for teachers and researchers to design organizational strategies for online discussion,and on the other hand,can also inspire teachers to make effective interventions so that discussion can promote learners’ deep cognitive engagement and knowledge contribution.On the other hand,it can provide new ideas for the effective evaluation of the quality of online discussion. |
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