Critical Reading and Researching Main Ideas
The Three Main Points from the Journal Article
In the article “Online class size, note reading, note writing and collaborative discourse” Qiu, Hewitt, and Brett (2012) attempt to find the relationship between the class size and the reading and writing loads among students of online graduate courses. The authors’ first main point in the article is that there is a positive relationship between the class size and the total number of notes the students and instructors wrote. The second point of the article is that dividing students into smaller groups for discussion purposes helps to increase the collaborative effectiveness of the online graduate classes. Lastly, the authors present a third main point, which argues that the use of multimedia software can help to increase collaboration between online students and instructors in large classes.
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Rationale for Each Main Point
The analysis of literature explains the first main point in the journal. The authors argue that online class settings affect the structures of asynchronous online discussions to engage the students in meaningful discourse. This point is used to explain the relevance of the research. According to the study, “class size is a major factor affecting note reading and writing loads in online graduate-level courses (Qiu, Hewitt, & Brett, 2012, p. 424).” Secondly, the authors of the article suggested that the division of larger classes into smaller groups would help to deal with the reading and writing issue. The authors suggested that “students in smaller groups tend to learn more (Qiu, Hewitt & Brett, 2012, p. 427). This is an essential point in the journal because it provides the possible solution to the identified problem. Lastly, the authors finished their work and suggested other options to use for managing larger online classes. The authors’ main suggestion was the use of software that will help to improve interaction between students. This is a main point of the journal because it provides a meaningful solution to the identified problem in the research.
Reason for Selecting the Main Points
The reason for selecting the three main points analyzed above as the authors’ main ideas is because of the present the issue and the solutions to it. The fact that the first point identified a positive relationship between class size and effective reading and writing makes it stand out of the other things discussed in the journal. Most of the journal is focuses on showing this relationship. The other two points stand out because they are the major solutions that the authors give for the identified problem. The points are related in that the first is the issue while the second is the solution that can be used by instructors to solve the problem. We can also use the third point which is an alternative solution to the issue in cases where the first solution is not applicable.
References
Qiu, M., Hewitt, J., & Brett, C. (2012). Online class size, note reading, note writing and collaborative discourse. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 7(3), 423-442. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases