The impact of role assignment on social presence in online discussions :|a mixed-method study

Abstract

The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed-method study is to examine the effect of role assignment strategy on students’ social presence in asynchronous online discussions. The participants were 81 preservice teachers who were enrolled in the Instructional Technologies and Material Development course at Boğaziçi University. Asynchronous online discussion activities were designed and implemented in four sections of the course. In two sections of the course, the students were assigned as the experimental group and engaged in online discussion activities designed with the role assignment strategy using the specific roles (starter, moderator, or summarizer); while the control group students completed the discussion activities without the role assignment strategy. The analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the social presence scores of the experimental group and the control group; the mean of the experimental group was higher than the control group. Descriptive analysis of the discussion posts revealed that there were more social presence indicators in the posts of the students who were assigned roles compared to the students who did not have roles. Also, moderators’ posts included more social presence indicators than the others’ posts; followed by starters, and then summarizers. While moderators used interactive expressions the most; starters and summarizers used cohesive expressions more frequently. This study makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing empirical data about the impacts of role assignment strategy on social presence in asynchronous online discussions.