Conscientious Discourse is an engagement where participants express their ideas truthfully, but also simultaneously focus on listening and responding to others. Facilitating and participating in conscientious classroom discourse is challenging. We present an approach — reinfrastructuring classroom discourse — by offering students and instructors more information in the initial moments of discourse through a system we developed, ThoughtSwap. This approach emphasizes focused, punctuated moments of attention to one's own and other people's ideas. 49%-100% of students participated in the initial entry of ideas over the course of the semester in 25 classes with nine instructors. The study showed that ThoughtSwap had operational success in that, on the average, instructors used ThoughtSwap once every other week during the semester. Furthermore, student participation rate ranged from 49% to 100%. This work further presents 1) the ways instructors adapted and adopted ThoughtSwap, and 2) the pedagogical goals and challenges they report using the tool. / Doctor of Philosophy / Facilitating and participating in classroom discourse is difficult. The process becomes even more challenging with the goal of inviting what we call Conscientious Discourse, where the participants not only share their ideas but also engage in both self-examination and reflection of other people's ideas. We present an approach — reinfrastructuring classroom discourse — by offering students and instructors more information in the initial moments of discourse through using a system we developed, ThoughtSwap. ThoughtSwap is not the mechanism by which discussion takes place, but instead changes the informational conditions under which synchronous discussions are held. In response to an instructor prompt, students contribute initial written thoughts under conditions of ``contained anonymity". Additionally, instructors may ask students to represent and respond to ``swapped" thoughts, contributed by other people present in the class. These actions created moments of focused encounter in which class members can contemplate their own ideas in relationship to other peoples' ideas as they begin actual discussion. ThoughtSwap use was studied in the context of university instruction by 9 instructors in 25 classes over the course of 6 semesters, to further their teaching goals. The study showed that ThoughtSwap seemed to have operational success in that, on the average, instructors used ThoughtSwap once every other week during the semester that did not contain guest speakers, tests, or holidays. Furthermore, student participation rate ranged from 49% to 100%. Instructors participated in focus groups and articulated their plans, goals, concerns and experiences. In this work I further present and discuss 1) the ways instructors adapted and adopted ThoughtSwap, and 2) the pedagogical goals and challenges they report using the tool. Secondary kinds of results that may also inform future work relate to student-level demographic and attitudinal data, and the design and creation of a system variant that attempted to respond to Covid. Most importantly, ThoughtSwap offers instructors and students an opportunity to deepen the chances for learning in the instructional environment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/111146 |
| Date | 06 July 2022 |
| Creators | Shrestha, Chandani |
| Contributors | Computer Science, Tatar, Deborah Gail, McCrickard, D. Scott, Hoadley, Christopher, Lee, Sang Won, Harrison, Steven R. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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