Spontaneous online tutoring : Students’ support of their own and other students’ process of inquiry in online text-based tutoring

Sammanfattning: The use of online technologies has made education more accessible. In online education, there are increased expectations for students to be self-directed and take responsibility for their learning. Research has also shown that students can benefit from learning from each other. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how students support their own and other students’ process of inquiry in online text-based tutoring sessions. To enable the analysis of the conversations, a coding scheme for transcript analysis of online tutoring was introduced based on the Relationship of Inquiry framework, which is an adaptation of the Community of Inquiry framework.This thesis consists of four papers. The first paper focuses on the development of the RoI coding scheme, which is used in two of the following papers. In the second paper, the coding scheme is further revised regarding the aspect of students’ teaching presence and how it connects to students’ support of their own and other students’ inquiry process. In the third paper, students’ support of their own and other students’ process of inquiry in online text-based tutoring sessions is studied further, and their messages are analyzed with the revised coding scheme. The fourth paper adopts an inductive approach and analyzes how students take responsibility for their own and their peers’ problem-solving through thematic analysis. The findings show that in online tutoring sessions, students may spontaneously take on the role of a tutor. Through their expressions of teaching presence by, for example, explaining their issues and their previous steps, or answering other students’ questions and giving suggestions, students support their own as well as other students’ inquiry process. The findings indicate that students acquire metacognitive development, through self- and co-regulation, with their expressions of teaching and cognitive presence. Furthermore, the findings show that the coding scheme with fixed categories may not show the full picture of interactions in an online learning environment. Additional analysis reveals that students’ expressions focus on different levels of learning while supporting the problem-solving process. Lastly, this thesis offers guidance on how to create online tutoring sessions where students take responsibility for their learning and are encouraged to help one another.