Talk to Me about Discussion Board

[smccormack]

This week I’m rethinking online course Discussion Boards and how best to utilize them in my courses. I’m particularly interested in a reevaluation of this tool as I prepare to teach a hybrid version of a course that I typically have taught either entirely online or fully in-person. As I toy with the idea of a flipped classroom, I'm questioning the best use of Discussion Board in such a format.

Currently I use the Discussion Board as a way for students to feel more connected to the course and their classmates, in addition to discussing content. In a typical online course, the first post is assigned during Week One of the semester when I ask students to introduce themselves to their classmates. Generally, I will give them some specific questions around which to frame their post: How would you like to be addressed by myself and your classmates? What are you studying? Or what are your long-term goals related to your education?

In the syllabus I hide a question for students to answer in the first Discussion Board, such as “Who is your favorite superhero (loosely defined)? Copy and paste a picture from the internet into your post.” As I’m reading those first responses, I keep track of students’ “superhero” answers. Then as part of Week Two I include the results – i.e., “25% of you chose Spiderman, while 15% of you missed the question in the syllabus (please re-read it carefully if this is you!).”

Ultimately, I would like to better use the Discussion Board to gauge how well students are understanding the material. In recent assignments I have posed questions based on the students’ reading of primary sources. Depending on the source (and topic) I’ve had some excellent back-and-forth between students on the Board. I grade the Discussion Board on a 10-point scale that takes into account whether or not the posts have answered the questions while also adding new content to the discussion. 

I would love to hear from anyone in the Macmillan Community who has used polling as part of the Discussion Board as a way to measure student understanding of assigned readings. Has anyone polled students about content comprehension and then determined the topic of the Discussion Board based on the results? If so, what did you use for a polling tool and did students actively participate? What was the time frame for the poll versus due dates for Discussion? 

Please share! 

[JDuncan]

Ahh, the discussion board!  This is the bane of my online existence. Yes, I want my students to have a way to connect with me and with their classmates, but I struggle to find a way to make discussion posts more than activities that check a box.  My own data collection showed that discussion grades actually inflated student grades; but, my polling of student perspectives indicated that students felt the discussion requirements actually hurt them. So, they weren't really learning more and they were actually feeling worse about themselves and my class.

So, I rethought them altogether.  I no longer have the standard weekly discussion requirements. Instead, discussions fall into two different types in my courses.  On a weekly basis, discussion boards are optional places where students can ask or answer questions on that week's content with no worries about how their posts affect their grades.  They can ask for help on an assignment, they can post interesting questions, they can talk to me or their classmates and they have no worries about these posts impacting their grades (other than they can actually learn from them if they want).  These ungraded boards also allow for them to share experiences just for fun. For example, in my British literature classes, I'll post fun "challenges" ranging from voting on their favorite Harry Potter movie to posting a photo of them trying a new food.  It's a chance to engage with the culture they're studying and with each other in fun way. Of course, since these are optional, not all students will participate, but those who do find the experience more valuable and those who don't have fewer complaints about what they see as "busy work."

The second way I use discussion boards is for public display of knowledge. Rather than having students post their research project in a dropbox just for me, they post them on the discussion board so that all of their classmates can see them.  They have to ask each other questions about their work which means they're collaborating to learn together and, because they know their work is public, they put more effort into making a finished product of which they can be proud (at least that's the hope).  As a move from college to career, it also helps them understand that work product is often required to be shared with others.  At this point, I've never had a student complain about posting their work publicly, but, if necessary, I can allow them to post anonymously or I can post for them under my name, and while students can see each other's work, they do not see each other's grades.

[ScottC]

I'm with folks on the fear of a discussion board becoming a weekly, "box checker." While I haven't tried this yet, I sat in on a colleague's course this spring who used discussion boards to drive their in-class (synchronous) discussion. I hadn't thought of using it in this way, but was able to modify some of my spring course discussion content to a format where class discussions could be supported with online posts (videos, abstracts, links to articles, etc.). At least that way students could "check the box" while in class and I plan to try to use the discussion board to 'forward-load" class discussions this fall.

[monroe117]

I attempted to use a tool called Perusall, which allows educators to turn reading assignments into discussion boards.  The idea is that students can make comments directly in the text (which other students can see) and to have them communicate with each other (and the instructor) about areas they are excited or confused about in the text.  I tried to use this as a new tool with a group of students who I had already had for the first semester of the course.  The students were not used to being held accountable for reading assignments and some had dyslexia, so the students found the process of the assignment difficult.  I think the idea of using this tool to identify gaps in content understanding is great, but did not have much success with it.  If there was a way to embed polls into reading assignments that could be used to start discussion boards I think that would be great!