Subjects: 40 undergraduate (mostly sophomore and some senior) students in the course C1, 80 undergraduate students (fresh- man) in C2, and 20 graduate students in C3

Methods: 
-Control Group and Forum-Based online learning group
-Measured procrastination (submission time) and plagiarism (students could not pick the same topic as another group or individual for their project)
-Measured student reactions and thoughts about forum-based online learning with 100 question questionnaire 

Subjects and Methods

This article looks at student productivity, engagement, and motiavtion through online forums in comparison to lectures.

- There was an increase of early homework submitters when students were in the online forum, in addition to fewer late submissions (reduced to less than 50% late submission rate compared to the regular online homework submission
- Majority of regular style homework was submitted on the 7th day, which was the final deadline. Amost none submitted it before day 5. The forum based submissions only had 30% of students wait until day 7 to submit
- Students who were asked to do in depth focus on a couple research articles and then give a presentation showed better understanding compared to those asked to write a research paper. They also reported lower stress
- Creating blocked work is better, both for final term papers and final presentations. Teachers that require students work on papers in small incriments over a span of time normally find better productivity with less repetition or plagiarism. 
- Around 80% of students agreed that information diversity could be increased on online discussion and more than 90% agreed that lecture was not enough for learning material
- However, the majority preferred to continue with normal lecture and regular homework (80%)

An experimental case study on forum-based
online teaching to improve student’s engagement
and motivation in higher education

- Moodle.com
- Website where students can submit assignments, have discussions, collaborate on online projects, give and receive feedback
- In addition to typical classroom/lecture setting
- a "third space" that “emphasizes the faculty–student interactions in a free and cooperative environment” (Kang & Zhang, 2020)

Villanova University

Grinnell College

Kang, X., & Zhang, W. (2020). An experimental case study on forum-based online teaching to improve student’s engagement and motivation in higher education. Interactive Learning Environments. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1817758

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