The Effectiveness of Canvas Online Discussion Forums for Essay Writing Class: The Students’ Perceptions

Islamiyah, Siti. 2022. The Effectiveness of Canvas Online Discussion Forums for Essay Writing Class: The Students’ Perceptions. Thesis. English Language Education Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember.
Advisor: (1) Indri Astutik, M. Pd. (2) Nurkamilah, M. Pd.

Keywords: Students’ Perceptions, Essay Writing, Online Discussion Forums, Canvas.

This research aimed to find the students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of Canvas online discussion forums for an essay writing class. The subject of this research was students in an essay writing class in English Language Education Program, and there were 12 students. The researcher’s used of quantitative research survey design in this thesis, and intended to provide an overview of the effectiveness of the Canvas as an online discussion forum for essay writing class through questionnaires as the data collection technique. The data in this study are presented in numerical and descriptive form. In this study, the researcher attempts to analyze the students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of Canvas online discussion forum for essay writing class. This study contains a deep and detaile description of the result of this study. The findings from the questionnaire indicates the Canvas online discussion forums provoked different student reactions. The perception aspect is divided into three parts, as follows: affective aspects, sense of community, and cognitive aspects. Affective aspects consist of 6 indicators with five Likert scale ratings. Based on table 4.1, it can be seen that the average of affective aspects indicates 49.2% positive, 39.4% neutral, 12.1% negative. Sense of community consist of 4 indicators with five Likert scale ratings. Based on table 4.2, it can be seen that the average of sense of community indicates 50.04% positive, 36.37% neutral, 13.6% negative. Cognitive aspects consist of 6 indicators with five Likert scale ratings. Based on table 4.3, it can be seen that the average of cognitive aspects indicates 47.0% positive, 30.3% neutral, 22.74% negative. It can be concluded, students gave positive perceptions in the affective aspects, sense of community, and cognitive aspects. Overall, these aspects have a good enough perception. As for the implications of this finding, one of which is shown in indicators 12 "The online discussions section and activities in Canvas do not help me to improve my skill in English essay writing" indicates as many as 54.6% disagreed of Canvas online discussion forums could not help them to improve their writing skill. And then in indicator 13 "The use of the Canvas online discussion forums did not affect in my essay writing" indicates 45.5% students also recognized that Canvas online discussion forums for writing had a good effect.