Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Recent studies have begun to explore alternative ways to support social interaction in threaded discourse. This dissertation extends this research by exploring how a Like button, much like Facebookâ s, can provide students with a low-cost mechanism to interact with each otherâ s discussion posts. I explore how this ubiquitous social media tool was integrated into an experimental academic online learning environment, Pepper, to support student discussion from multiple perspectives. The research suggests that the Like button was adopted in threaded discourse as an indirect speech act, the meaning of which varies because of how it is used by students. There are four studies that explore how the Like button was used by students enrolled in graduate-level online discussion-based courses at a leading Canadian institute of education. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used to explore student interactivity to better understand the role of the Like button as a social scaffold in threaded discourse. Social constructivism and speech act theory were used as frameworks for the project. Collectively, the findings suggest that the Like button in threaded discourse was an effective social interaction tool used by students to engage in a shared learning experience. Recommendations to expand the Like button into additional low-cost social and learning scaffolds and to provide environment users with integrated support on the availability and function of these tools is provided. The findings of my research act as a starting point for integrating more low-cost mechanisms into threaded discourse by providing thought-provoking ways of integrating and adapting ubiquitous social media tools in academic environments.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Alexandra Makos
Language: English
Topic: Online and Blended Learning
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2807554445