PARQR: Automatic Post Suggestion in the Piazza Online Forum to Support Degree Seeking Online Masters Students

As enrollment numbers in online courses increase, students, instructors, and teaching assistants have difficulty finding needed information in online forums because of the number of posts, resulting in duplicate posts that exacerbate the problem. We introduce PARQR, a recommendation tool that suggests relevant contributions as participants compose their posts. We investigate the use of PARQR in five online degree-seeking courses. We survey 74 students and interview five teaching assistants to understand their experience with online forums and PARQR. We compare the differences between using and not using PARQR for an online course assignment. PARQR users found the tool to be useful for navigating online forums, and PARQR was effective in reducing the number of posts (0.291 vs. 0.506 posts per active student) and duplicate posts (17.8% vs. 25.6%) in an online course. These results suggest that PARQR makes on-line forums more efficient for users to find needed information.