Mohan Pant

Discourse-Analysis of Discussion Boards Related with Concepts of Research Process and Statistics in Online Graduate-Level Educational Research Method Courses

Mohan D. Pant, PhD

Assistant Professor of Research Methodology,
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education
[email protected]

My project is on a discourse analysis of students’ discussion boards across all offerings of the educational research method course [EDUC 5395: Designing Classroom Research] offered at The University of Texas at Arlington between 2012 and 2016. The textual data will be extracted from discussion boards of all course offerings of EDUC 5395. The data will be analyzed at the group level and popular themes will be aggregated to shed light on the conceptual knowledge of research and statistics. The data analysis will also focus on finding possible misconceptions of statistical terms. Anonymity will be used throughout the project to protect participant identity.

J. T. Dellinger

Hi Mohan, I know that your data is preliminary, but I am curious how you identify the misconceptions in your dataset. Will it be through higher usage of certain terms used incorrectly in a particular question? Are you also looking at things like cohesiveness in writing, etc.? I would be curious to hear if they improved throughout their courses and if there were any modifications to the prompts.
Maria Trache

This is an ambitious project.. many years of data and many courses. I tried to come up with a strategy to examine the discussion board for one research method course with 9 modules, and after 3 modules I stopped because I have to refine my strategy. My lack of knowledge and practice handling qual data is definitely a barrier, but I still have the feeling of overwhelming information. Good luck with the project!
Peggy Semingson

I am doing something similar, Mohan! Let’s get together and compare notes.
Jenny Roye

I love the use of the word cloud to define your themes. I agree with Maria, it is a very ambitious project spanning 4 years. Lots of data to work with. Thank you for keeping your video short! I Think several of us need to follow suit. Mine was WAY too long.