Deconstructing the discussion forum: Student questions and computer science learning

Online discussion forums are widely used and hold great promise for supporting students in learning computer sci- ence. Understanding how we can best support students in learning computer science through online discussion forums is an important open question for the CS Ed community. This paper analyzes discussion forum posts from 395 students enrolled in CS2 across two different universities. The results demonstrate that students use the discussion forums often for logistical and relatively shallow questions. How- ever, the largest portion of questions reect some level of constructive problem-solving activity, and are positively correlated with course grades. Questions that neither describe students' reasoning nor their attempts to solve the problem constitute the smallest percentage of questions, but these questions may be particularly important to attend to be- cause of their relationship to students' prior experience.