Student‐led facilitation strategies in online discussions

Abstract

This study explored student‐led facilitation strategies used to overcome the challenges of instructor‐dominated facilitation, enhance the sense of learning community, and encourage student participation in online discussions. It presents a series of cases of students’ facilitation strategies and using qualitative data analysis of discussion threads within the naturalistic inquiry framework, identifies three facilitation strategies: inspirational; practice‐oriented; and highly structured. The study shows that these facilitation strategies generated innovative ideas, motivated students to participate, and provided a risk‐free and relaxed atmosphere for participation.