Use of instructional dialogue by university students in a difficult distance education physics course.

This study investigated the kinds of dialogic behavior engaged in by students
while studying a difficult physics course at the Open University, UK. Research
objectives were twofold: (1) to document what dialogue types, mediated through
which resources, were utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties
that emerged while reading the course materials and while solving difficult Tutor
Marked Assignments and (2) to correlate dialogic behaviors with several student
attributes (age, gender, motivation to achieve a high grade, learning preference
and a prior acquaintance with at least one other student in the course). Two main
findings emerged: (1) initially, a large majority of students dealt with both kinds
of difficulty individually; only when such efforts failed did they turn to
interpersonal dialogue and (2) a very large majority of students turned to
instructors for help, not to their peers. The first finding replicated those from
previous studies while the second finding differed from previous ones wherein
students turned overwhelmingly to peers, not to instructors.