Asynchronous Discussion Board in the Program of Professional Diploma in Teaching: Perceptions of Pre-Service Information

This study presents a qualitative look at a blended learning approach by investigating the pre-service IT teachers’ perceptions of asynchronous discussion board (ADB) as a tool for learning and evaluates the advantages and challenges of such a practice. ADB was integrated into the methods of teaching IT course for 13 female preservice teachers over 14 weeks. In addition to the weekly face-to-face class meetings, students were requested to make, collaboratively or individually, weekly contributions to the course web discussion forum in which they discussed course content, generated questions, responded to questions, uploaded documents and provided links to websites. The instructor evaluated students' postings on a weekly basis. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and analysis of participants’ postings on the discussion board. The results indicated that the participants perceived ADB as an important and interesting learning and communication tool because it helped them to access, explore, process, communicate, and apply information in ways that are radically different from face to face-based pedagogies. On the other hand, the main challenges of using ADB as perceived by participants were the heavy extra workload “time burden”, slow network and shutdowns, lack of immediate feedback, and making connections to prior postings. Discussion of participants’ perceptions was explored, and implications for effective use of ADB were provided.