Small-group teaching is becoming increasingly rare in the university setting, and anecdotal evidence suggests that this trend is unpopular with students, and could thus impede effective learning. Web-based forums could alleviate this problem, by fostering interactions between students to mediate co-operative learning. This project aimed to study students' perception of discussion forums, and their effectiveness, using two task conditions (structured vs. unstructured) and group sizes (small vs. large). The forums ran over a three-week period for two different modules offered to the same cohort of second year Psychology students, divided into small or large groups (n=10 and 20 respectively). In the structured condition each group was asked to generate a question, answer a question generated by another group, and mark (with brief justification) an answer generated by another group; in the unstructured condition students were required to answer three questions. The measures were (i) number of forum contributions (readings and postings) (ii) students' evaluations of forums (via questionnaires administered before and after the modules).

Data from the contributions showed a larger average number of readings/postings per active student in the structured (51) than in the unstructured (40) condition, but this was unaffected by group size. Groups tended to have one active student that tried to lead proceedings, but there was little evidence of online interaction.

The questionnaires revealed that 62% of the students used the forum in the unstructured condition and 64% in the structured condition. Students' ratings of the potential usefulness of the forums dropped from 3.2 at the beginning to 2.6 at the end of the module (1=not useful, 5=very useful); they rated the actual usefulness of the forums as 2.0 for both, although they preferred the unstructured (2.2; 1=disliked, 5=liked) to the structured task (2.0). This was despite the fact that their liking for the module material associated with the unstructured condition was lower (2.5) than that for the structured condition (3.2). Students thought that discussion forums were potentially more useful for revision (3.2) than for other activities (2.2).

The original aim was to evaluate forum effectiveness, and so it was intended to make the forums compulsory to ensure participation; however this was disallowed on ethical grounds. Instead students were informed that the forum topics would not be covered in the lectures, but could be on the exam. This strategy did not produce adequate participation. Despite students perceiving the potential usefulness of online discussion, actually participating reduced their perception of its usefulness. Students' comments conveyed that they would only use an online forum if it were compulsory and that they resented having to engage "do-it-yourself" learning without any tutor feedback. The main implication of this project is that the use of unmoderated discussion forums to stimulate interactive group learning is not a popular/effective teaching method. Suggestions will be presented as to how forums could be used successfully, such as actively involving the tutors in the discussions.