Early Participation in Asynchronous Writing Environments and Course Success
EARLY PARTICIPATION IN ASYNCHRONOUS
WRITING ENVIRONMENTS AND COURSE
SUCCESS
Scott Warnock, Kenneth Bingham, Dan Driscoll, Jennifer Fromal, and Nicholas Rouse
Drexel University
ABSTRACT
Many researchers have documented connections between student motivation/proactive student behavior
and academic success. This study investigates if early participation on course message boards is
connected with success in online and hybrid courses. Investigating 12 first-year writing classes, eight
hybrid and four fully online, the authors found that first posters on course message boards had better
grades than the class final average in every course, and later posters tended to have lower grades than the
course average. The researchers also correlated course performance with average length of posts, finding
earlier posts to be longer. This study was conducted in two phases, with the researchers initially
investigating six courses and then engaging in a more robust analysis with additional metrics of six
additional courses. The results provide teachers with evidence to support the connection between student
volition and success in classes that rely heavily on learning in asynchronous writing environments.
KEYWORDS
online, hybrid, asynchronous, participation, volition, procrastination, motivation, writing, message board,
grades, learning effectiveness
I. INTRODUCTION
Many teachers and researchers have found a correlation between student motivation/proactive student
behavior and school performance. Students who are motivated to complete tasks and are assertive in their
approach to course work appear to have greater academic success. Busatoa and co-authors [1] cited many
previous studies in saying, ―For educational settings, drive or degree of motivation has been refined to
achievement motivation—i.e., the striving tendency towards success with the associated positive effects
and towards the avoidance of failure and the associated negative effects—and is also known to be an
important predictor for cognitive performances‖ (p. 1058). They found that the personality trait of
conscientiousness—defined as ―the will to achieve, self-control, persistence, and dependability‖ (p.
1059)—correlated with academic success. ―The lesson for students […] might be that it actually does not
matter if you use elaborate processing strategies, as long as you just work hard and conscientiously
enough…‖ (p. 1064). Wentzel & Wigfield [2] stated bluntly that ―students' motivation is crucial to their
school success‖ (p. 169). ―Volition‖ has been another way to describe this type of student behavior: ―This
class of psychological activity—prioritizing goals, managing effort and time, completing tasks with
dispatch—also has much to do with the inherent values and desired outcomes of schooling in modern
society‖ (our emphasis) [3, p. 229]. Balduf [4] investigated how even high-achieving high school students
can falter in college due to lack of motivation and suggested preemptive strategies for college freshmen.
From a variety of perspectives, student success aligns with the old adage, ―The early bird gets the worm.‖
For decades, most educational research about classroom behaviors has focused on onsite learning, but as
online educational offerings continue to grow – the 2010 Sloan-C report of online enrollments, Class
Differences: Online Education in the United States, 2010 [5], reported that the previous year showed the
largest year-to-year increase ever in online enrollments, with 5.6 million students enrolling in at least one
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Early Participation in Asynchronous Writing Environments and Course Success
online course in 2009 – we need to better understand student behaviors that lead to success for e-learners.
Teachers of such courses certainly want to build on the ―good student‖ advice that onsite teachers provide
for their students. Some work has been done specifically in online education to identify traits and
behaviors that can contribute to student success. For instance, Wojciechowski & Palmer [6] investigated
179 students in an online undergraduate business course at a community college to determine student
characteristics and their relationships to success in the class; they said that identifying characteristics of
success could help educators place the proper students in online courses. They looked at 13 different
demographic or learner characteristics in these online students in determining that grade point average
and attending an orientation session were most highly correlated with student success in the course.
Picciano [7] examined the idea of ―presence‖ in online education administration courses, supporting other
studies that ―establish a strong relationship between students' perceptions of the quality and quantity of
their interaction and their perceived performance in an online course‖ (p. 32).
Some researchers have even looked specifically at motivation and online learning. Moore & Kearsley [8]
and Sull [9] indicate the importance of motivation in providing students with a positive online experience.
Martens and co-authors [10] and Wighting and co-authors [11] both found that online learners had high
levels of intrinsic motivation, perhaps further emphasizing the value of self-drive for those learning in
online environments. And Shroff and co-authors [12] used a qualitative methodology in an effort to better
understand how students’ intrinsic motivation is influenced by technology-supported learning
environments; they felt that understanding connections students make with these tools will help
instructors design better educational approaches.
Findings about behaviors such as motivation make sense, of course, but educational studies in this area
have been valuable for several reasons. For one, this work demonstrates how traits and behaviors translate
to specific classroom performance so educators can provide concrete, perhaps easily applicable, learning
advice and strategies to help students improve classroom performance. For instance, Gump [13]
conducted a study of 300 undergraduates and was not surprised to find strong negative correlations
between absences and final grades. While Gump recognized that academic success involves many factors,
he said that attendance should be one of the easiest variables for students to control. Also, these studies
can complicate seemingly obvious cause-effect relationships. Perkins & Wieman [14] discovered that
students who sit in front of the room in physics classes tend to have better performance. While one might
assume that better students gravitate toward the front, they found that it was seat location itself that was a
significant factor in how students performed in their study, perhaps complicating the cause and effect of
seat location. Benedict & Hoag [15] also found that forcing students forward and center caused these
students to have significantly better chances of receiving an A and not receiving a D or F. These studies
both result in a questioning of the utility and fairness of the large lecture hall as a means of delivering
education. Likewise, Dietz [16] studied sociology students and determined that significant predictors of
success included attendance and reading required readings. Instead of just chastising students about
coming to class or sitting in a more advantageous seat or reading, teachers can use the results of these
studies and others like them to demonstrate empirically the correlation between class behavior and
success. In other words, by identifying the behaviors associated with shared or common student practices
and classroom tools, such studies are valuable in that they systematically describe successful student
strategies, thus advice about those behaviors rises above the level of lore.
In online learning, the message board asynchronous communication tool is widely used. (Bliss &
Lawrence [17] provide a good overall description of message boards.) Message board applications are a
ubiquitous component of course learning systems (CLS), and they are easy to use for teachers and
students, providing a means of creating a rigorous written communication environment. In online writing
courses, message boards allow teachers to use a variety of teaching strategies to enhance their course
goals. A number of people have written in detail about how to use message boards effectively and have
provided detailed guidelines for ways teachers can moderate and maximize these online conversations
[18-21]. Cody [22] said that the flexibility provided by message boards enables students to be confident
parts of a community class dynamic, even though those conversations are not taking place in real time.
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Instructors have also developed innovative ways to employ these types of asynchronous technologies into
their courses. Meyer [23] described a teaching strategy in which students rate the value of their
colleagues’ posts each week. Ugoretz [24] described the value of digression in the message board
environment and how the environment encourages such divergent but enriching conversations.
Asynchronous tools have also spurred teaching creativity to explore other means of creating textual
conversations; one interesting example is Gao & Wong [25], who investigate the use of ―text-focused
wikis‖ to facilitate conversations; they found that such conversations appear to ―[improve] the quality of
instruction‖ when compared with the normal threaded conversation. The use of asynchronous
technologies are a backbone component of many online courses—especially online writing courses—and
teachers are uncovering new ways to employ these tools in their courses.
Message boards might be a good place from which to assess student behaviors such as volition and
proactivity in online learning. Their common use in teaching is one reason. Two, they are often a
significant part of course grades. Three, and this marks a potential improvement over onsite studies,
message board conversations are easily archived and accessed; course activity is stored within these
online environments, providing a rich data source. For these reasons, developing correlations between
student performance in this asynchronous environment and course performance could benefit most online
students. In this spirit, Wang & Chen [26] demonstrate a model to promote ―cognitive presence‖ in online
message board conversations. Their goal was to provide a design framework for online instructors—as
they said, ―an in-depth investigation is needed about how the design of online discussions is related to
success or failure‖ (p. 158). Woo & Reeves [27] discuss the level and quality of interaction online in
suggesting strategies instructors might apply to provide meaningful asynchronous interactions in their
courses, such as modeling and using authentic activities. Bliss & Lawrence [17] connected a variety of
online behaviors with instructor behavior, finding that instructor activity was well correlated with student
participation, quantity and quality of student posts, and the extent of threading. Researchers are
attempting to find how student work in this environment connects to their progress as learners.
This study picks up at that point. We investigated the connection between volition and courses success in
asynchronous environments, seeking to quantify proactive student behavior on message boards and to
correlate that behavior with student success, as defined by overall course grades. Specifically, we wanted
to discover if students who posted early on the message boards of their hybrid and online courses
demonstrated better overall success in those courses, but we also looked at the amount of writing in their
posts to see if that correlated with course success as well.
II. METHODS
A. Two-phase analysis
Part of our objective in this article is to help other researchers think about the opportunities presented by
the message board environment. To reflect that, we are describing how our methodology for this study
went through two phases. In the initial analysis, we investigated student posting behavior in six courses.
To augment those findings and make them more robust, we then analyzed an additional six courses,
adding several more elaborate metrics to our analysis, thus expanding our findings while also
strengthening the initial results.
B. Course descriptions and instructor posting behavior
We analyzed 12 first-year composition courses taught by three instructors, all of whom are co-authors.
These courses are part of Drexel’s three-term first-year writing sequence, which begins in the fall with
Expository Writing and Reading, continues in the winter with Persuasive Writing and Reading, and
concludes in the spring with Analytical Writing and Reading. Drexel operates on a quarter system, so all
of these courses were conducted for 10 or 11 weeks. Of the twelve courses, eight were hybrids and four
were fully online. In Drexel’s Freshman Writing Program (FWP), hybrid first-year courses meet once a
week for one hour and 20 minutes, and the materials and activities that comprise the other weekly course
meeting take place via Blackboard Vista or Blackboard. (Most Drexel courses use Blackboard Vista as
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Early Participation in Asynchronous Writing Environments and Course Success
the CLS. However, Drexel has a for-profit division, Drexel E-Learning, that administers fully online
courses; these courses are taught by faculty from most Drexel departments, and they employ Blackboard
as the CLS.) First-year writing courses have enrollments caps of 20, and each of the courses studied had
between 14 and 20 students. In the hybrid courses, the message board conversations and other informal
writing accounted for 30% of the course grade. In the fully online courses, the pedagogy was similar, but
there was more work in this environment since the students did not meet face to face. In those courses, the
message board conversations and other informal writing could account for 45% of the course grade.
The courses had some variability in teaching methods, but they were all taught with a similar pedagogy
that featured message boards as a significant component of the course work. For all 12 courses, the
message board environment was highly conversational, with students working through issues and
questions in the course on the message board. Much of what Wang & Chen [26] might call ―cognitive
presence‖ for students in this regard took place on the course message boards. Generally the three
instructors would provide students with one or more threads each week that related to course readings or
to questions about students’ reading, writing, and thinking processes. Students in each class would write a
number of primary and secondary posts and could also contribute shorter posts; the primary and
secondary posts had different due dates, and there was typically a set number of posts due each week.
Primary posts were defined in various ways, but they were normally 125 to 150 words. Secondary posts
were around 75 to 100 words. While the instructors operated with weekly deadlines, on occasion a
particularly complex or active thread would carry over from one week to another. (Warnock [28-30]
provides a detailed description of the philosophy for using message boards in Drexel first-year classes.)
Of course, it would have been ideal if the three instructors had a uniform, systematic method of
responding to student posts, as we recognize teaching variability affects student behaviors. However,
while the three instructors varied in their on-the-ground teaching practices in the way they used message
boards—and there were some differences in online and hybrid approaches as well—they used not only a
similar structure, but a similar guiding pedagogy in responding to and participating in student posts. All
three instructors embraced a pedagogical approach on the message boards described well by Collison and
co-authors [18], who say that ―inquiry in dialogue‖ for students ―emerges from a course design that
enables them to construct their own knowledge, together. The facilitated online discussion is the container
for this construction of meaning and useful outcomes‖ (p. 3). They encourage instructors to utilize
asynchronous tools ―to clarify and extend the thinking of other people‖ (pp. 104–5). To do that,
instructors may adopt different roles, such as responding to students as a ―generative guide,‖ who
provides a spectrum of positions to indicate different avenues of questioning students might pursue in a
conversation, or as a ―conceptual facilitator,‖ who focuses responses on specific elements of student
postings. All three instructors employed elements of this approach in their own message board behavior.
It is also worth noting that all three instructors are also writers who feel quite comfortable and skilled at
conducting nuanced written conversations with writing students; in some way, the recognized their
writing as models for the students.
Instructor A estimated replying to about 25% of the student posts during a term, attempting to adopt
Collison’s various roles in providing encouragement, elaboration, and inquiry. He also thought it
appropriate to challenge students when their posts called for that. One key strategy for Instructor A was
for him to provide summary/milestone posts at midweek, attempting to summarize, often with direct
quotes from students, the current conversation, as well as to attempt to move the dialogue forward.
Instructor A wrote many long posts when summarizing threads, but he also contributed short, often onesentence posts to individual students. In Instructor A’s hybrid courses, a very similar model was followed.
Instructor B estimated replying to about 15% of student posts directly, but pointed out that many student
posts in his course were not meant for teacher response, such as introductory week one posts and the large
number of peer reviews in his course (although these peer review posts are graded and the instructor does
respond, though not as part of the discussion). Instructor B said post length could vary from posts of up to
200 words when describing students’ thoughts about their major writing projects to posts as short as 50
words when providing feedback on discussion questions.
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Instructor C’s rate of response and length of posts were similar to his colleagues, although he used a
different approach in hybrid courses worth mentioning here. In those classes, initial/primary posts were
due Wednesday, class met face-to-face on Thursday, and secondary/response posts were due Friday. The
Thursday class meeting allowed students to share views from the message board, and instructor C could
also provide additional information about the direction the discussion was taking. The instructor normally
selected a relatively small number of posts to focus on (usually 4 to 5) and would also mention other posts
that were part of those threads; each week, the instructor attempted to focus on different students. After
the class meeting, students would return to the message board to continue the discussion with secondary
posts, and the instructor would post follow-up and wrap-up posts in the conversation.
The instructors’ grading schemes were similar, in that all of them graded the posts on a simple numerical
scale, providing grades at least on a weekly basis; and they based their evaluation on not only
participation, but also on post quality. As mentioned, the message board posts were all a significant
component of the course grades. Both Instructors A and C also encouraged students to self-assess their
posts according to detailed grading information in the courses.
Overall, the three instructors used the posts in these first-year writing courses as crucial reflections of
students’ writing and thinking process. Much of the students’ roles in the course were defined by
participation in the message boards and, perhaps more importantly, by interacting with one another in a
conversational electronic environment with many opportunities for participation.
C. Phase one: Initial analysis of six courses
Jennifer, as part of an undergraduate research fellowship she was awarded in the summer of 2008,
reviewed six FWP courses, five hybrid and one online, after the courses were completed; and she
recorded in a spreadsheet each individual message board thread in all six courses course: 169 total threads
comprised of thousands of posts. She then analyzed each thread, determining which student was the first
poster and which student was the last poster. Unlike others who have investigated message board threads
such as Picciano [7], we counted any kind of post, regardless of length.
The instructors for each course recorded the final grade for each student, and the students’ names were
changed into a code to protect privacy. We then converted each course grade to a number according to the
following scale used at Drexel University [31]:
A
4.0
A3.67
B+
3.33
B
3.0
B2.67
C+
2.33
C
2.0
C1.67
D+
1.33
D
1.0
F
0.0
Using simple math, we then calculated the average grade of all of the students who had posted first on
each thread and the average grade of the students who had posted last for each thread. We then calculated
the overall average student grade in each course. The results are discussed below.
D. Phase two: Follow-up analysis of six additional courses
After reviewing the results of the first analysis, we followed up with a further investigation of additional
courses. After reviewing the methods and results of our initial analysis, Nicholas, as part of a research co-
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Early Participation in Asynchronous Writing Environments and Course Success
op position that he was awarded in the spring and summer of 2010, developed additional metrics to
analyze these additional courses. Essentially, we built from that earlier work to see if our findings from
the phase two analysis would remain consistent with our first results, as well as to create what we hoped
would be more robust results. In this follow-up analysis, again six classes were analyzed, including three
hybrids and three online courses.
In the phase two analysis, Nicholas analyzed 112 threads, again comprised of thousands of individual
posts (there were fewer threads than in the phase one analysis because in several of the literature-themed
phase two courses, only one thread was used per week to generate dialogue). We added several different
metrics to analyze the posting order, looking at the first, second, third, third last, second last, and last post
for all threads. While analyzing the posts in our follow-up analysis, the metric of ―last first‖ post was
introduced. The ―last first‖ post is the last student to post an initial post on a particular thread. We
introduced this idea because we learned that it was common for first posters to post multiple times on a
thread, and thus early posters at times also posted toward the end of the thread; so an early poster might
be counted as a late poster for that thread as well. While we believed our large dataset enabled us to
accommodate such variations, the ―last first‖ post metric interestingly accounts for this posting behavior,
identifying students who truly were late in their involvement in the conversation and providing more
complexity to our view of first and last posters.
In addition to posting order, in phase two Nicholas also tabulated the word count of posts; for this
analysis, we did not count any post under ten words. Unfortunately, Blackboard Vista and Blackboard do
not provide a tool to generate cumulative word count per student, so this work was done manually. All the
threads were expanded, grouped by student, and then exported into Microsoft Word to generate the word
count.
Using a straightforward methodology similar to our phase one analysis, the word count and posting order
data were then attached to students’ final grades in the courses in order to determine a correlation between
word count, posting order, and grade.
III. RESULTS
A. Results from phase one analysis
In the phase one analysis of these courses, the results were strikingly consistent across all six courses. As
indicated in figure 1, for each class the overall grade of the first posters was higher than the overall grade
of the last posters; and for each class, the overall average final grade of the students in the courses fell in
between the grade of the first and last posters. The total for the six phase one classes indicated that first
posters had an average grade of 3.33, while last posters had an average grade of 2.63, a difference in
Drexel’s system of more than a B+ to a B-. The average numerical grade of all students in these six
courses was 2.91. In one class, Hybrid A, the difference between the first and last poster was more than a
full grade point, 1.01.
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Phase one analysis of posting order
4
Average Grade
3.5
3
2.5
Average grade of first posters
2
1.5
1
Average grade of all students
in course
0.5
Average grade of last posters
rs
es
ou
Al
lC
rid
E
D
Hy
b
rid
C
Hy
b
rid
Hy
b
rid
B
A
Hy
b
rid
Hy
b
On
lin
e
A
0
Course
Figure 1. Phase one analysis of posting order: Average grades of first posters, all students in each course, and last posters
B. Results from phase two analysis of six additional courses
Our results from the phase two analysis of six additional courses were consistent with our initial analysis
in terms of early posters vs. overall grades in the course: Early posters tended to do better in the course as
measured by grade (their average grade was 3.26) than the average final grade in the course (which was
2.9). Unlike phase one, the last poster data varied somewhat by course, but when looking at all six phase
two courses together, the results were similar to phase one: Last posters, with a total average grade of
2.61, did worse in the course as measured by grade than the average grade in the course.
Average grade
Phase two analysis of posting order
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Average grade of first
posters
Average grade of all
students
Average grade of last
posters
Hybrid F Hybrid Hybrid Online B Online C Online
All
G
H
D
Courses
Course
Figure 2. Analysis of six additional courses: Average grades of first posters, all students in each course, and last posters
By employing a more detailed metric that included second, third, third last, second last, and ―last first‖
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Early Participation in Asynchronous Writing Environments and Course Success
posts, we were able to see another trend, as indicated in figure 3. Again, the average grade of first posters
in the six courses was 3.29, while the average grade of last posters was 2.61. Those students who were
last to post their first post, the ―last first‖ posters, had an even worse average grade, 2.28. So these ―last
first‖ posters had a grade average a full letter grade lower than the first posters in the six phase two
courses. In fact, other than the fact that first posters had a slightly lower average grade than second
posters, 3.29 to 3.34, there was a steady downward trend in average grade based on posting order,
bottoming out with the ―last first‖ posters.
Phase two: Average grade by post order
4
3.5
3
GPA
2.5
2
All Courses
1.5
1
0.5
0
First
Second
Third
Third
Last
Second
Last
Last
Last
First
Post Order
Figure 3. Phase two analysis of six additional courses: Average grades of posters by posting order
By including word count in our phase two analysis, we were able to see another interesting aspect of
posting behavior. Unlike posting order, for this analysis we did discount any post shorter than ten words.
As figure 4 indicates, the initial posters wrote posts that were an average of nearly 260 words (which is
much higher than the minimum posting requirements in any of the three courses). The last posts were
only 136 words. There was a large change from the early posts to later posts as indicated by the drop from
third post, 234 words, to the third last post, 138 words. Interestingly, the ―last first‖ post curves upward
again, averaging 195 words. We speculate that while the average word count in posts on the threads tends
to decrease as the threads age, the ―last first‖ post is the initial primary post for that poster. While the
average final grade of such posters tended to be lower than not only the class average but also every other
posting order point we measured, those posters still wrote posts of fairly significant length. Because the
classes were structured so that response posts had shorter length requirements, it makes sense that later
posts would be shorter. What is interesting is that our first posters were so much higher than second, third,
and ―last first‖ posts.
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Phase two analysis of word count and post order
300
Word count
250
200
150
All Courses
100
50
0
First
Second
Third
Third
Last
Second
Last
Last
Last
First
Post Order
Figure 4. Phase two analysis of six additional courses: Correlation of word count with posting order
IV. SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS
As mentioned in our Introduction, instructors have long been aware of the value of student engagement,
and with the interest in and growing use of online learning, they have sought ways to help online students
increase their success. In their second ―tip‖ in the article ―Teaching Writing in the Space of Blackboard,‖
Davis & Hardy [32] said, ―Look for and encourage active engagement.‖ Collison and co-authors [18]
found that initial posts by students can seem disjointed, but they can ―be viewed as essential experiments‖
with course design, interface, or how their voice will ―sound‖ online. Discourse, they say, must move
from ―ice-breaking to wallowing in the shallows to reasoned discourse‖ (p. 18). They also say that one
sign of a healthy Web learning community is when participants post regularly.
Yena & Waggoner [33] conducted two similar online writing courses in spring 2002 to gather student
perspectives on these courses. Through the student comments, they identified procrastination as a factor
in student success. For instance, comments from students who completed the class ―suggest that students
who are self-motivated, organized, and able to fight off procrastination can do well in an online class,‖
although Yena and Waggoner add that these types of students normally do well anyway. In sharing
commentary from students who did not ―enjoy the online experience, or who ended up withdrawing,‖
they find students who said they were not motivated enough for an online course, offering sample
comments such as, ―Keeping up with everything in this course was hard for me mainly because I think it
was easy for me to forget about it because I was never actually in class,‖ or ―I'd like to drop [the course],
and take it later on in a conventional classroom environment. I think the constant reminders to get my
work done will help, and I won't let myself fall as far behind as I have in this class.‖ Yena and Waggoner
extrapolate from these comments that ―procrastination and self-discipline become a problem, as they
seem to need the physical reminder of going to class to stay focused.‖ Although they did not find ways to
identify at-risk students pre-term, they recognize that teachers could identify certain student behaviors as
the course is running.
Our study primarily investigated students’ posting behavior in asynchronous learning environments, as
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such behavior is a significant component of many online courses, including the ones we studied. By
looking at posting behavior, we tried to determine if student volition, determination, and/or proaction as
manifested in message board participation translated to better course outcomes. Analyzing 12 courses in
two six-course groups, we found consistent evidence that students who post early on class message
boards earned grades that were overall better than the class final average and, likewise, that students who
posted later in general received final grades less than the class average. In refining our methodology for
our phase two analysis, we further discovered that students who were the last to post their initial post on a
given thread, what we called the ―last first‖ posters, had the lowest grades of any of the posting order
groups. This ―last first‖ poster may well be the most severe group of procrastinators in the course, those
who wait until much later than the rest of the class to engage in a thread; while we do not know for a fact,
we may assume that they are often not reading the posts early either and, thus, are altogether behind in
their work and the overall course experience.
Aside from the obvious—i.e., that early posting behavior is a manifestation of the most academically
savvy students, those who would easily do the best in all courses because they procrastinate less—there
are other reasons students who post early in asynchronous environments might tend to have a better
outcome in those courses.
The advantage of being ground-level on asynchronous discussions. As discussed, in all of the courses, the
message board conversations were a significant part of the coursework. Students were graded on not only
quantity but also on the quality and significance of individual posts. Students who post early in the cycle
might be in a better position to engage in the conversations represented by the posts because they have
helped to start the pace and direction of those conversations.
The dynamic of “breaking the ice” and the subsequent anticipation of response. Anyone who has sent a
provocative email knows the anticipation that can accompany awaiting a response in an electronic
communication medium. Students who break the ice early—and this is something that could be studied
further on individual threads—might be more invested in that conversation because they may eagerly and
regularly check the CLS to see how the conversation unfolds. The cumulative effect of this would be that
they would be more aware of the dialogue on the message boards.
Spending more site time on the CLS. Instructors often notice in online and hybrid courses that some
students simply do not check in on the course enough. Not only do they miss assignments, but they also
miss announcements and the informal discussions that may take place in the course. Students who are
regularly checking in on the course would be much more on top of the message boards, and that may
manifest itself in their earlier posting behavior.
As part of our phase two analysis, we also investigated word count, which revealed interesting
correlations between student behavior and course performance, although we feel because of the nature of
our courses that those correlations were not as strong as the posting order data. Early posts are longer, and
this trend holds through six categories of posting order, with a significant drop between the earliest posts
measured, posts one to three, and the last posts. The ―last first‖ posters, who again did much worse gradewise in the course than any other posting order category, did write a substantial amount; and our
speculation is that this divergence from the posting order data was that because while they were late, these
posts still represented their initial ―official‖ post, and thus they made somewhat substantive contributions
to that thread’s conversation compared to the true last posts, which were often cursory ―final words,‖
sometimes posts that the students did not even intend to ―count‖ in the course. However, these posts,
which again were the first post by these latecomers, were an average of about 25% shorter than the first
posts on the thread; so in this comparison, again the motivated, early posting students outperformed their
procrastinating colleagues. While we did consider a number of factors in our word order analysis, there
are factors in the way asynchronous discussions operate that make the shorter posts less significant than
the posting order data. For instance, as mentioned, as threads ―age‖ during the week, and the posts tend to
get shorter as students respond more succinctly to each other. Also, all three classes had shorter word
counts for secondary/response posts, so these posts would naturally be shorter.
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Of course, there are other ways to analyze posting behavior, and instructors who use asynchronous
writing in ways that are much different may observe different trends in their own classes. Also, we did not
classify posts in any way based on quality of content, although if we had, we think that might have made
some of the last posters look even worse. For instance, sometimes the best students will close out a
week’s conversation with a thoughtful synthesis post. If we had included in our analysis of the latter posts
further ―penalties‖ for vapid or repetitive posts, the last posters who tacked on commentary at the end of
the week (or later) might have performed even worse in our analysis. Finally, although we conducted a
retrospective analysis of the posts in these courses, the courses were all taught by study co-authors; and
we are aware of the potential for bias in formulating a study’s results based on researcher-taught courses.
We hope that these results can be a component of the formula online teachers use to help their students.
Instructors are always seeking ways to help their students’ succeed. By drawing on studies of student
behavior, teachers not only have added authority in recommending that students arrive at class on time, do
not skip class, and complete the required readings, but we also model strongly the kind of research-driven
practices we often teach. In a similar spirit, this study identifies and quantifies online behaviors to elevate
those behaviors from beyond the realm of teaching lore. We will share these results with our students, and
our hope is that others could do the same as reinforcement for students who engage early (and, probably,
often) in their asynchronous conversations so that students will find themselves more involved with the
important dialogue of the course. The goal, of course, is to use early posting behaviors as a catalyst for
increased participation and engagement with the course, and the power of the study in raising this advice
from the realm of lore seems valuable to us. Sull [9] said that one of the three most crucial components of
online instruction is the ability ―to motivate and enthuse‖ students. Despite some limitations of our
analysis, the early poster data helps see how students who consistently post early seem to have an
increased opportunity for success in course. In addition, when coupled with the early posting data, the
word count analysis provides a further perspective on student behaviors on the message board. As
increasing numbers of students participate in online courses, educators need clear, data-driven metrics to
encourage student behavior.
We hope our two-phase methodology itself may be of interest to researchers and teachers as well. We
performed an initial analysis and then, upon reflection, not only added courses to the analysis but also
added parameters to make the analysis more robust and detailed. Online learning environments provide an
incredibly rich source of data for studies of student engagement and behavior, and the methods of analysis
can, and probably should, often evolve. While Blackboard and Blackboard Vista contain useful tools for
this research, such as easy ways to determine the number of student posts, the development of a word
count tool and a more customizable student tracking tool kit would be useful. As researchers, we can
develop—or even work with the companies that make these systems—tools for research and assessment.
Such initiatives would work for the mutual benefit of all: teachers, the CLS industry, and, most
importantly, students.
This study mainly demonstrates that students who participated early in asynchronous environments
tended to have better outcomes in their online writing courses. With this information, instructors can
provide students with evidence-based advice about motivation and volition in electronic environments.
By encouraging their students to post early, teachers may help them take control of a key behavior that
allows them to be more engaged in the course material with a concomitant rise in their performance,
learning, and, thus, grades in their courses.
V. ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Scott Warnock, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Freshman Writing Program at Drexel
University, specializes in using technology to enhance writing instruction in courses across the
curriculum. His research interests include the influence of digital tools on the writing process, new tools
for writing assessment, and science and medical rhetoric. He has taught a variety of writing courses
ranging from first-year writing to business/technical writing to writing for the Web. Scott is a member of
the start-up company Subjective Metrics Inc., which is developing Waypoint, an online writing
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assessment tool and peer review tool. He has also worked as a freelance science and medical writer and
communicator for nearly a decade. He received his MA from Rutgers University Camden and his PhD
from Temple University in 2002. Dr. Warnock is the co-author of The Writing Tutor and has articles in
such journals as Science Communication, Learning Technology, and The Teaching Professor. He also
helped coordinate Drexel University's pilot offering of online Freshman Writing courses. Dr. Warnock
teaches in the Freshman Writing Sequence in both face-to-face and online environments.
Kenneth Bingham teaches in the Freshman Writing Program and Readings in Drama in the English
Program at Drexel University.
Dan Driscoll teaches in the Freshman Writing Program and Readings in Fiction in the English Program
at Drexel University.
Jennifer Fromal is a writer and content manager at eLocal USA LLC.
Nicholas Rouse is a mathematics student at Drexel University.
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