I was excited to come across a virtual session delving into that question at the Online Learning Consortium’s Innovate 2023 conference, which I attended in April. Instructional designers Laurie Berry and Kristin Kowal, from the University of Wisconsin Extended Campus, researched role-play in online discussion boards and developed a framework they feel can elevate student engagement beyond info-dumping. They demonstrated how to implement each step by switching between the roles of student and facilitator. Here’s their five-step guide to improving asynchronous discussions.
Provide clear expectations. Without a solid understanding of what they need to do, students may default to answering the prompt without engaging classmates or class concepts. So instructors should lay out their expectations of student participation early on. In other words, if you want students to respond to each other’s comments and ask questions, say so.
Encourage students to share their thought process. Student responses can include explanations of how they developed their answer as a way of showing their work. Sharing their thoughts also encourages students to explicitly detail their assumptions, explain why they think ideas are related, and perhaps deepen their understanding of a concept.
Invite students to add questions in their replies. Questions invite answers, and answers can become entire conversations. By simply adding a few questions to their reply, students open the door to deepening the discussion. Someone who may have otherwise stayed silent may feel compelled to share.
Require students to weave in researched evidence. Supporting conclusions with evidence is one of the most essential critical-thinking skills. Instructors can ask students to weave evidence into their response instead of simply citing links. This challenges students to think critically about how and why they source their information, and may prompt them to integrate course materials into their analysis.
Ask students to include reflection. Ask students how they believe they performed. Did they try their best? Did they contribute something meaningful to the conversation? By adding reflections to their discussions, students can think back on what they learned, what they found useful, and how this new knowledge can be incorporated into their lives.
Berry and Kowal provided examples of instructors implementing only one or two steps into their discussion rubrics and still seeing some positive changes. At the end of their presentation, they asked viewers to write in the chat which steps they would try for their class. Answers flew in so fast that Berry couldn’t read them all. “I don’t know if we have [one step as a] winner over all of them, but it’s so exciting to see people thinking to try some of these,” she said.
Do you use discussion boards in your class? Have you found other strategies that work well for making them engaging? If you don’t use discussion boards, do these ideas resonate with any other ways in which students participate in your online course? Write to me at luna.laliberte@chronicle.com and your story may appear in a future newsletter.
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ICYMI
- The real problem with ChatGPT? “The ideas on the paper can be computer-generated while the prose can be the student’s own,” argues Owen Kichizo Terry, a student, in a recent essay for The Chronicle Review.
- Jennie Young lays out 10 ways that ChatGPT will enhance the teaching of writing in an opinion article for Inside Higher Ed.
- Professors’ well-being creates conditions for students’ well-being, argues Sarah Rose Cavanagh in a recent advice piece for The Chronicle.
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—Beckie
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