Towards an understanding of ECE students´ Use of online homework help forums

Online discussion forums have emerged as a popular Web application to build and support online communities for numerous engineering interest areas and practice. However, a review of engineering education literature reveals scant research on the use of online discussion forums for engineering learning beyond the classroom. This study addresses this gap in knowledge through a study of the “Homework Help” section on AllAboutCircuits.com to examine what students sought help for and for what purpose. We downloaded over 6,000 discussion messages spanning over 8 years and extracted the textual data with a Python program. Instead of analyzing the data through manual means, we utilized the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) to capture textual patterns and leverage a topic modeling approach, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, to identify connected clusters of words. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analysis was also used to determine how often students use words associated with cognitive processes. We found that the homework help section of informal online discussion forums cater to students seeking help on fundamental ECE topics. Our findings also suggest that online discussion forums are supportive learning environments, as students freely engage in meaningful inquiries and social interactions with other learners.