Discussions

In a traditional classroom, teachers and students meet face to face.  In this setting, students and teachers can have meaningful real time discussions of subjects.  Teachers can hear (and sometime see) what students are thinking.  Teachers can then prompt the students to think deeper by asking follow up questions.  Students can also talk to each other.  This allows students to learn from each other and to hear from other perspectives.  While this is happening, the teacher can interject to keep students on task or prompt them to go a different direction with discussions.  It is much more difficult to have such discussions in an online classroom.

One way to approximate such discussions is through the use of 'discussion forums'.  Georgia TOOL suggests these best practices for using discussion forums.

• Respond to the first thread of all student responses and ensure that the post addresses the essential elements
• Highlight selections from the prompt, reading, or thematic focus of the student’s response in the initial feedback
• Integrate audio commentary in the response
• Link to external resources, readings, or websites for further study
• Rely on the Socratic Method in all Discussion Forums

I like the first suggestion.  By responding to the first thread of all student responses, the teacher shows that he is monitoring responses.  Moreover, if he does so quickly he can complement the student for having all the essential elements or prompt him for missing elements.  Not only should this get the first student on track, but it should get all the rest on track.

Likewise, highlighting selections from the prompt or focus in the students response helps ensure that the the students are getting the essence of the question.

Before I did the last section on TOOL, audio commentary had not even been a thought for me.  However, I liked the idea and recently started using it.  I think that Soundcloud makes it as simple as anything out there.  At any rate, I like the idea of using voice commentary to the students.  It grabs their attention and lets me say more in less time.  It is easier for students and for me, the teacher.

The fourth idea - link to external resources - is a great idea and one that I don't do enough.  The teacher can link outside resources for remediation or extension.  It is an easy way to give constructive feedback.

I somewhat disagree with the last suggestion for best practice.  I do like the Socratic Method and think that it should be often used.  This helps ensure that students have to think for themselves, but allows the teacher to guide the students by questioning.  However, I think that there are times that the teacher can and should be more direct.

For my online class, I use Moodle as my LMS.  It has lots of neat features for discussion forums.  One that I particularly like makes students submit a response before they can see others responses.  I like this because all too often, students merely copy one another.  By using this option, the student has to think to formulate his reply and can then see if others agree with his reply or if they took a completely different approach.