The Use of Peer Facilitation in University Asynchronous Online Discussion Environment

Abstract

Many university faculty members throughout the world have adopted the use of asynchronous online discussion as an integral learning activity in their student learning environment. Sometimes university faculty members may appoint students to be peer facilitators in an asynchronous online discussion forum. In this paper, we report four empirical studies that examined peer facilitation and how it could promote the following two major outcomes: (a) increasing students’ online participation rate, and (b) fostering higher levels of knowledge construction. We briefly describe these four case studies and extract the major lessons learned. We believe that these lessons would be useful to other university faculty members who are interested in using peer facilitation in their asynchronous online discussion environments.