How and what university students learn through online and face-to-face discussion: Conceptions, intentions and approaches

Abstract

This paper reports a phenomenographic investigation into students' experiences of learning through discussion - both online and face to face (F2F). The study context was a second-year undergraduate course in psychology for social work in which the teacher had designed discussion tasks to begin in F2F mode and to continue online. A combination of open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews was used to investigate students' conceptions of what they were learning, their intentions and their approaches to learning through discussion. Analysis of the interview and open-ended questionnaire data identified a number of qualitatively different conceptions, intentions and approaches to le..