The emotional labour of online course discussion forums: some autoethnographic insights

Abstract

Online discussion forums are now commonplace in Higher Education and Further Education courses, however, the extent to which learners engage in meaningful dialogue in these virtual spaces varies widely. Whilst a body of research has examined a range of issues surrounding discussion forums, less research attention has been paid to the emotional and affective aspects of participation. This paper reports an autoethnography of the first author’s experiences and affective responses to discussion forums whilst studying three online postgraduate microcredential courses. The study was underpinned by cultural-historical concepts to theorise how a person’s lived experiences create a frame through which they perceive and interpret the social and cultural world. The findings highlight how one learner experienced a broad spectrum of affective responses which could vary rapidly as she progressed through the course. Decisions whether to participate in forums were influenced by an entanglement of personal factors, course-contentrelated factors (or subject matter) and by task-relatedfactors. The study illustrates the unpredictability in learners’ responses to, and participation in, discussion forums; it urges educators to avoid typecasting individual learners or learner groups, and instead, embrace the uncertainty of learners’ responses.