Mining student discussions for profiling participation and scaffolding learning

Online discussion boards play an important role in distance education and Web-enhanced courses. Recent studies have pointed to online discussion boards as a promising strategy for promoting collaborative problem-solving courses and discovery-oriented activities [1,2]. However, other research indicates that existing systems for online discussion may not always be fully effective in promoting learning in undergraduate courses. For example, some analyses of collaborative online learning indicate that student participation is low or weak, even when students are encouraged to participate [3,4]. As course enrollments increase, with some introductory courses enrolling several hundred students, the heavier online interaction can place a considerable burden on instructors and teaching assistants. We are developing instructional tools that can automatically assess student participation and promote interactions.