2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

curriculum. The nature of the online content itself, without direct influence from the teacher,must be strong on its own.When asked the overall effectiveness of threaded discussion boards for learning mathematics,a small number of students indicated that threaded discussion boards were effective. It isimportant to note that threaded discussions were not a requirement of the course. Geometrystudents’ motivation to use threaded discussion as a means to get help was not influenced by anexternal influence of a graded course requirement; this suggest a need, lends itself for moreresearch.An examination of synchronous interactions revealed that students felt that synchronousactivities were an effective way of learning mathematics and half reported that this modality wastheir choice interaction. Again, for this study, participation in such synchronous activities wasnot a requirement of the course. For pre-algebra and algebra students, their preferred interactionfor learning mathematics online was through synchronous activities. This was explained by thehigher levels of participation between the pre-algebra/algebra and geometry subgroups.However, there is little research on the effectiveness of synchronous activities. Only one studycited that synchronous activities produced no notable differences in achievement (Lou et al.,2006). This indicates the need for more research.There were several limitations in this study. First, the survey analysis depended on theinformation provided by the students themselves. It also depended on the students’ eagerness toparticipate in the study and on their truthfulness. Next, there are limitations with the interactionslogs. There is no way to account for the actual use other than the time recorded. For example, ifstudents merely log into the content and walked away from the computer the time is logged bythe computer as active. There no way to differentiate this type of logged activity from a studentwho is actively reading the content. However, the same can be argued with a student sitting in aclassroom who does not pay attention to the teacher. Further, one could argue that one course;geometry may have more interaction opportunities than say the algebra courses, therefore mayexplain the elevated participation time online.The collection of synchronous interactions is not without flaw. The synchronous collection ofdata was based on student login information. If a student did not properly log in, their attendancewas not recorded. Future upgrades to the system will include integration with students’identifiable information. Additionally, use of threaded discussion board and synchronousProceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 168