Online Teaching and Learning
30 Asynchronous Discussions
Jennifer Smith
The best teaching practices are generally those that help students to grapple with concepts to develop their own understanding. Discussion between students has an added social benefit. Participating in a learning community can spark greater interest and enthusiasm for course topics and activities.
Online Discussions | Preparation | What is a Good Prompt? | Good Practices | Logistics | Challenges | References
Online Discussions
Online discussions provide a different type of discussion-style experience than a face-to-face classroom.
- Students have time to think about the topic before responding
- In order to receive credit, all students must contribute
- A student who thinks of another idea after posting can share the new thought
- Participation can occur on the student’s own schedule
The Revamping Discussions for Online workshop (1:17:16) covers the features of a good discussion prompt, how to get your students to write thoughtful responses, and how to provide feedback in a time-efficient manner. This article from EducauseReview shares “10 Tips for Effective Online Discussions.”
Preparation
Students may be new to online discussions as a means to promote learning. It is a good idea to lay some groundwork before discussion assignments.
- How will this discussion help students to learn the material?
- Why do students need to learn this?
- How will you help them?
- Providing credit for the activity demonstrates that you believe it has value
Ground Rules
Provide netiquette guidelines and expectations for discussion participation.
- Identify the rules you think are needed
- Polite and friendly
- No profanity or shouting (all caps)
- No personal or grade issues should be addressed in online discussions
- Remind students that the goal is to build a learning community that cares and helps each other
- Invite students to contribute to the ground rules
- Groups generate lists of good/bad practices
- Synthesize to reach their top 5 (use the “like” feature for rough voting)
- Groups put their top 5 into a full class discussion and vote
- Remind students of the ground rules periodically
What is a Good Prompt?
The more intriguing and interesting your discussion prompt is, the better your engagement and responses will be. Aloni and Harrington (2018) describe the following features of a good prompt:
- Promotes critical thinking skills
- Has more than one answer
- Open-ended
- Higher cognitive level (Bloom’s Taxonomy)
- Requires students to apply previous knowledge
- Invites exploration
- Expectations for participation are clear
- Promotes divergent thinking
- Interesting or thought-provoking
- Provides a task
- Forges a personal connection with the material
- Does not “waste students’ time”
Things to avoid:
- Too vague (especially at the beginning of the semester)
- Questions with a definitive answer
- Asking for opinions, unless substantiated with evidence
Good Practices
- Divide students i