10 Tips for Setting Up Online Discussions with Your Class
Sheila Pinchin, Office of Health
Sciences Education
Are you setting up blended learning in your
course? Will your students be participating in an online discussion
board, such as those available on Learning Management Systems like Moodle, D2L,
or MEdTech? Here are 10 tips that may help you get started.
1.
Consider size and facilitating. Try to
create discussion groups of no more than 15 members. Try to get
facilitators for different groups if possible. Depending on how many
questions, tasks, and how fervent the discussion, a facilitator can be
monitoring hundreds of postings. Check into privacy issues when you are
deciding who facilitators should be. E.g. If the facilitator is a senior student
there may be privacy and authority issues. Ideally the professor would oversee
all boards, and be able to "dip" into discussions, and trouble-shoot
if a facilitator brings a problem or a fabulous answer forward. With
smaller numbers of groups, the professor may facilitate all.
2.
Aim for diversity in groups.Diversity among group members is great,
and it's often present in random groupings. But grouping to represent variety
in the students’ work experience is powerful because the students can share
their experiences with each other then and learn from them. For example,
if students are placed in work experience settings of rural communities, small
cities, large cities, other provinces, farming communities, mining communities,
etc., the postings from a variety of work settings will enrich the discussion,
if there are representatives from each community in each discussion group.
Why not build in questions about the variety you’ve
introduced into the groups? For example, ask the students to report on
the types of injuries that are common in a rural farming community, etc.
3.
Maintain privacy.Students should be cautioned not to mention names of people
(patients or staff), or even facilities by name...they can characterize
generally: 40 year old male etc...in a rural setting etc...
This protects the privacy of patients and also of
staff whose practices may end up being discussed as models, etc. Caution
students that professional demeanour is important in this respect…don’t write
what you wouldn’t say…
4. Create
a sense of community.
This may be accomplished in many ways:
develop introductory meaningful and fun activities.
Create a “café” where students may
gather and chat about anything, including recipes, where they live, etc.
While research has suggested that
faculty stay out of the café, many have found it a great experience, especially
when introducing the course.
Consider students’ workload so that they rarely feel overburdened.
Assist with time management in the
design of the course, so that postings are deeper and “durable.
Give timely and constructive
feedback.
Be supportive in your
feedback as a model for others.
(See
Promoting Online Discussion, another article in this set.) Have some
“break” times in the course where students can breathe, catch up, or just chat
with you.
5.
Observe netiquette and maintain
professionalism: Strongly emphasize netiquette (see this link as an
example: http://www.studygs.net/netiquette.htm)
and reinforce by creating a specific section of the rubric for assessment on
tone of voice, support for colleagues on the board and ability to move the
discussion forward. This will be extremely important if the students are
discussing ethical issues or other controversial issues, but is equally
important to establish a climate of positive, supportive learning.
Ask students to review a posting prior to sending
it to check for professional tone. In fact, advise students to write in a
word processing document first, before copying and pasting to the Discussion
Board composition text box. This allows for spell checking as well as
building in a pause prior to sending anything. Remember that on most Learning
Management Systems, once a message has been sent, only the administrator can
delete it.
6.
Assess participation on the discussion board: Be explicit about what you want to see in the Discussion Board by
assigning criteria in a rubric, checklist or scale for assessment of student
work. You can use this rubric formatively, to offer un-graded (or graded
for a smaller percentage) comments to further the work of the students, and
also summatively, to offer grades and comments at milestones in the course.
7.
Prepare discussion board topics and give clear instructions for them.Set up the topics for the
discussion board ahead of time and refer to these topics, using correct
wording, in the modules of content. E.g. "When you have completed your
consideration of pro's and con's of xxx, post your ideas to 'For and Against'
on the Discussion Board." Use folders or other “containers” for each
topic.
Give clear and concise
instructions for tasks.
8.
Give the
opportunity to practise using the Learning Management System (e.g.MEdTech).If you have the opportunity to see
your students face to face prior to using the discussion board, have the
students practise in the classroom while you're with them and have the learning
management system in front of you. If you can’t meet face to face in a
blended situation, set up a video, online chat and/or a practice module (all
three would be good!) to give students a chance to practice logging in, finding
their way around, and posting and replying in a thread. This will save all
kinds of trouble-shooting later. And for both situations, just in case:
schedule synchronous chats or keep pre-determined “office hours” for students
with questions. Respond within a short set time period for this module
particularly to emails from students in the field.
9.
Be clear about your expectations for participation on the discussion board. If you want students to respond to others, be explicit about
what you consider response to be. Provide examples of effective
response. (See Promoting Online Discussion, another article in this
set.) If you want students to create or develop something, be clear about
all of the criteria for successful participation in this task.
10.
Use sound practice in teaching and learning to develop tasks:
Develop
these (types of) tasks: reflect, read, apply, discuss, apply, synthesize,
look back.
Consider tasks that ask students to:
•
Reflect (activating prior knowledge and/or experience) in order to lead
into an activity, using methods such as a case scenario, an Anticipation Guide,
a pre-test, a series of prompts, or pose a reflective question.
•
Read from the literature around this topic and summarizing key concepts
or controversial issues (Use journal articles they can access through WebProxy
from home or work placement or web articles from reputable sources, or use a
courseware pack of articles printed with appropriate copyright permissions
ahead of time.) Offer guiding questions to accompany the reading.
•
Apply the reflection and reading to a case scenario, or other situated
questioning technique
•
Ask students to work together (via email or discussion board) or to
respond to each other’s applications on the discussion board
•
Ask students to synthesize learning, by creating something new from
their reflection, reading and discussions,
•
Ask students to review the learning, and respond in a journal or log to
bring back with them, and/or tie into their ongoing activities
