Short Answer Type Discussion Forum Analysis and Assessment

A recent research study on the online discussion forum shows significant improvement in the learning growth of students. The discussion forum is a very useful pedagogical tool and plays a very important role in providing interaction among the participant in online courses. The study shows the use of discussion forums in the online course helps the participant in the better learning experience and improved critical thinking through collaborative learning, the course performance, and the cognitive presence is also increased. The researcher suggests that the discussion forum should be the part assessment tool. This paper investigates the use of a question answer type of discussion forum for the assessment of student posts based on the content analysis and the relevance of content to the discussion topic. A similarity measure is calculated for assigning the grade to the student answer and the result is compared with the teacher grade shows the significant results.