Reading 2

Hrastinski, S. (2008). What is online learner participation? a literature review. Computers & Education, 51(4):1755-1765.

The author reviewed 36 references to re-define online learner participation and to analysis the related research issues. First, she defined the 6 levels of the concept of online learner participation from the references. Second, she classified the type of online communication, methods of research analysis, and the units of analysis. There were 7 types of units of analysis: quantity of messages or units, messages or unit quality, learner perceptions, messages lengths, system accesses or logins, read messages, and time spent. Although actively posting/writing in online communities is the commonly understanding of participation, lurking or little contribution on writing were increasingly recognized that learning still occurs through such behaviors in online settings.

The author redefined the online learner participation as “a process of learning by taking part and maintaining relations with others. It is a complex process comprising doing, communicating, thinking, feeling and belonging, which occurs both online and offline.”

Reading 1

Preece, J., Nonnecke, B., and Andrews, D. (2004). The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone. Computers in Human Behavior, 20(2):201-223.

The authors reported that the reasons of lurking in online settings in the study: “not needing to post; needing to find out more about the group before participating; thinking that they were being helpful by not posting; not being able to make the software work (i.e., poor usability); and not liking the group dynamics or the community was a poor fit for them.“ They also concluded that “most lurkers are not selfish free-riders.”