Digital genres in the making: A corpus-based analysis of student interaction in online forums

This poster offers an integrated overview of a long-term research project on student interaction in asynchronous online discussion forums in higher education, conducted by members of the SUNCODAC research group over approximately a decade. The ultimate aim of the poster is to present a coherent sample of the project’s main research concerns and findings, illustrating how a sustained corpus-based approach has allowed us to examine the development of interactional, pragmatic, and discursive competence in academic computer-mediated communication (CMC). All the studies discussed are based on SUNCODAC, a corpus of student forum discussions compiled in the context of a blended undergraduate translation course. The corpus provides a common empirical basis for a series of investigations addressing how students manage collaboration, criticism, advice-giving, and interpersonal relations in a public, assessed, and multilingual online environment. The poster synthesizes findings from multiple studies that examine student forums as a distinct academic digital genre, characterised by a recurrent macro-structure in which a central task-oriented move (criticism and suggestions for improvement) is systematically framed by interpersonal and organizational moves. Particular attention is paid to the strategies students use to mitigate face-threatening acts, including previews of criticism, concessive structures, hedging, indirect advice, and relational work in openings and closings. Longitudinal analyses reveal clear patterns of change over the duration of the course, with increasing rhetorical complexity, greater investment in mitigation, and the emergence of shared norms through accommodation. Other strands of the project focus on interactivity and participation, showing that while explicit engagement with peers’ contributions is limited overall, a subset of students becomes increasingly central, shaping discussion practices and serving as pragmatic reference points for others. Research on identity and expertise demonstrates how some students gain prominence by successfully balancing authoritative knowledge claims with peer solidarity. Analyses of advice-giving and closings further highlight the tension between academic performance and social connection, as well as the impact of variables such as gender, linguistic background, and local versus exchange student status, often in ways that challenge stereotypical assumptions. Finally, the poster briefly illustrates how insights from this body of research can feed back into pedagogy, by informing corpus-driven classroom activities aimed at raising students’ awareness of effective forum participation. Overall, the poster positions the project as a longitudinal, corpus-based contribution to the study of academic CMC, showing how students collectively construct genre knowledge, pragmatic competence, and interpersonal norms in digital learning environments.