Asking Good Questions
Since substantive discussion starts with asking good questions, you want to ensure that your questions fit with your learning objectives for the unit and that you both a strong lead discussion prompt and follow-up questions to deepen conversation. If you want students to think critically and feel motivated to engage with one another, avoid questions that have right and wrong answers (once someone posts the 'right' answer there is nothing to discuss. Strong questions are generally those that have some degree of ambiguity, ask students to take a stand on a topic, or invite interesting personal stories.
Consider asking students to:
- Provide some evidence and justification from the course readings to support their postings.
- Reflect on what motivated them to make a particular post (e.g., "Why did you choose x?" "Why did you disagree with y?")
- Cite 'lightly,' meaning that you can tell what resource they're using but not citing as they would in a paper.
To prevent discussion board fatigue, create and save a series of regular discussion posts that can be cut and pasted into the forums. These posts should contain your thoughts on the topic, links to resources, or scholarship to further engage students in the discussion. These posts can be recycled each term. You will be able to make regular contributions without breaking a sweat.
Managing Posts and Interactions
Here are key tips and strategies:
- Before very specific about how, when, where, and how often you want students to be posting and reply to classmates.
- Set a time when posts are due. 11:59pm is common in many courses, but you can set it differently. Just be consistent for all discussions in your course.
- Require students to make an initial post early in the discussion and then reply to one or two fellow students before the end of the discussion. E.g., in classes that run Monday through Sunday, it is common to ask for the first post by Wednesday or Thursday and the replies by 11pm on Saturday or Sunday.
- Monitor discussion from the very start of the course and be consistent. Your early feedback and comments will show students you're serious about their posting and give you opportunities to correct poor posting habits by students early on. It's a good idea to check discussions every 24 to 48 hours.
- Post the initial response to all discussion forums. Interesting resources, insights, and additional questions can be posted to further student learning. This will establish your online presence before a student even makes the first post.
- If students are not participating early in the week in the discussion forum, you can consider posting an additional prompt encouraging students. Consider something like: “It is Tuesday and no one has posted a response yet. I am eager to get the discussions going this week. Post away!” This will facilitate student-to-student engagement early in the week and allow the instructor to simply facilitate the communication.
- If the flow of the discussion is getting at the key concepts you hoped for, drop in an occasional encouraging note so students know you are engaged. Model reflective practice by noting points that are especially strong and possible additional points to consider.
- If discussion seems to be getting off-track, nudge students by asking follow up questions. (E.g., I see that several of you think x, but what about y? Could this be relevant, and how?) This is just like leading an in-person discussion. You may need to repeat your nudges over several days. Don't get discouraged. You may be in the area with the most potential for learning because students are struggling to understand.
- Watch out for students who try to dominate the conversation or use inappropriate language. Email these students individually to discuss behavior that is becoming problematic.
- Address students by name.
- Consider giving some feedback via audio- or video-clip.
Assessing Participation
In a fully online course, discussions are typically assessed in some way as part of participation. However, you have the option not to grade discussions when they are preparing for an assignment or other work you will be grading. Discussion posts can be tricky to evaluate. Ultimately how you decide to do so is up to you, but be sure to make your expectations and grading schema clear to students. If possible, provide examples of strong discussion posts or model the types of comments you expect.
Here are few sample rubrics designed for assessing online discussions that you may find useful:
- Discussion Rubric Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository
- Grading online discussions (Rutgers University)
- Online Discussion Boards & Rubrics (University of Illinois, Springfield)
- Rubric for Asynchronous Discussion Participation (University of Delaware)
