Issue Home Volume 12: Issue 2

Top Five List: Making Online Discussion Work
Sandy Gambill, Program Director for Learning Technologies. Reinert CTE

5. In large classes, use small groups.
Tit’s easy to get students to “talk” online, but listening online translates into reading. If a class of 20, if each student is making an initial post and two responses on a discussion board topic, the listening can become overwhelming. Consider splitting your students into small groups for discussion activities.

4. When it comes to using the tools, think outside the box.
Not every discussion topic needs to be a full-on class discussion. Consider the discussion tool for activities such as peer review, journaling, and as a communication space to support group projects. If you’re thinking about trying the FELA technique described by Dr. Richter elsewhere in this issue, you could ask students to post questions or thoughts about the readings on the discussion board before they come to class. You might have small groups develop questions that would then be addressed in class.

3. Gauge how much you participate.
The professor obviously needs to make sure the discussion stays on topic, but if you post too much, you can find yourself conducting one-on-one tutorials with each student or in the worse case scenario, shutting discussion down all together as the students wait for you to express your opinion. You want students to “feel your presence” and know you’re reading their discussion, but you don’t want them to sit back and wait for you to do the work. A technique you might want to try is having students rotate responsibility for facilitating and summarizing discussions by working with you in advance to develop discussion questions for a particular unit and then by summarizing the discussion at it’s conclusion.

2. Use discussion prompts.
This sounds like a no brainer, but surprisingly, it’s something that doesn’t always occur online. In the face-to-face environment, you can spark discussion with “Questions?” or “What did you think about this chapter?” because you can immediately probe for more input or change the direction. You’ll need to be more specific online, especially with undergraduates. You’ll want to develop a very specific discussion prompt, such as “After you have read Chapter 2, list the two questions you have about Brown’s theory of psychomotor development. Then respond to the postings of at least two of your classmates.” Building in deadlines can be helpful here. If discussion will run for a week, set a deadline for the original posting so there will be sufficient time for conversation to occur.

1. Provide guidelines to ensure quality discussion.
Students often have difficulty formulating an appropriate academic discussion posting; it’s easy for a discussion thread to slip into the realm of opinion and anecdotal. You can head this off by providing clear guidelines that let students know what’s expected of them. This is only one of many examples available online.

Last updated 11.24.09