These are good, but I've found the structure of the online discussion boards matters, too.
I had used Blackboard's built in discussion systems for years. It never felt like 'discussion'. Replies to other student's postings were just that, direct addressing that did not take into account the ongoing dialog among all the students. That is, there was poor similarity between the online discussion content and interactions and that which occurs in a rich classroom discussion. The reason was, IMO, structure. The postings were not all visible simultaneously, but had to be read individually: Click click, read one, click close that one, click open another one, click close it, click… lots of clicking and the temporal relationship among the posts and replies was very difficult to follow. It wasn't discussion, it was simply asynchronous posting on a topic that allowed others to view the posts, with difficulty of multiple clicking, clicking, endless clicking. Add to that the difficulty of grading in which Blackboard 'conveniently' inserts a green bar to tell you how wonderfully you added a grade for a student that, just about in the amount of time that it takes to click on another student's name to begin grading, disappears, causing the content of the page to jump upward about ¼ inch, meaning you click on some other student's name or something else entirely. User antagonistic is the phrase I use. Last summer I found out about Schoology and Edmodo. Both of these sites are free, you can create courses in them that are private, and have an interface for discussions that is similar to Facebook. All responses to your questions are visible to all students, which I think is good, because they easily can see how well others are writing about the issue. They can respond in context and, if you require it or desire, directly to another student's post. The replies are obvious and clearly connected to the original posting and the order of the posts is obvious. Grading is easily managed. IMO, the content of student's responses is superior to what I saw on Blackboard and it is because the students can see what others are writing and have to 'up their game' to fit the implied social norm of posting quality. I prefer Schoology (and will present about it at our technology forum at the end of the semester) but Edmodo was a very worthy option and I'd have been very happy with it, also. Paul On Mar 26, 2013, at 5:07 PM, swalters wrote: I find a good way to elicit participation is to give fairly structured instructions such as "in Post 1 summarize blah blah blah and suggest 3 areas to explore further and why; post 2 (due a couple of days later) respond to some one else's post 1 with detailed suggestions for their 3 areas, and post 3 (due a couple of days later) - summarize, reflect etc. It might seem a little directive but you can push the thinking in specific directions and elicit critical thinking, response and reflection by requiring them to respond accordingly. I also give group activities where they have to discuss online how to construct a resource for something we're studying and then post and discuss content. My students have told me that they like the 3 staggered deadlines idea because they know there will be something to respond to and it also stops them from making 3 fast posts without much thinking behind them. All of my discussion are in groups of 3 to 6. You can also use a rubric so that students understand that there posts should move the dialogue along, rather than repeat or reiterate. Sally Capilano U On 03/26/13, Michael Britt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I think a lot of the "success" in online threaded conversations depends in part on what questions you ask and I was wondering what others on TIPS thought about this. I was just looking at Ellen Langer's book, Mindful Learning because I recalled that she addressed this issue. One of her memorable examples was that we should not ask students, "Is it possible to prevent pregnancy using a nasal spray?" (which would probably lead to a response like, "Ummm...no") but rather phrase it this way, "How could we use a nasal spray to prevent pregnancy?". Does anyone else know of any other resources/research on this topic of phrasing questions in a way that really stimulates thinking? Michael Michael A. 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