7.2 Discussion boards to increase active learning - principle 3 -

Distribute the workload

Pelz (2004) suggests that students should do most of the work in the course through student-led discussions. Some of the assignments that he suggests to encourage more active learning include: locating and discussing web resources (400+ word essay on the site with a facilitated discussion about the site), case study analysis (features discussion and collaboration with each student submitting individual assignments), collaborative research papers (papers are submitted for class discussion), research proposal team project (collaboration to collect resources and to develop the proposal. The proposal is reviewed by another team for comment).

Questions

Balance

We favor a structured approach to the discussion board. That is, provide samples or examples in the forum to help students stay on focus. If your prompt is too general, students digress. If it is too specific, you tend to get short responses. Step-by-step instructions (use numbering) help students understand what is to be posted and in what order. The general steps used in most activities can be applied to the board with little problem. For instance, a brainstorming activity might require students to post a list of ideas. These ideas are then examined and discussed to produce a shorter list. From this shorter list, consensus is reached on the best ideas and these are prioritized. To take this one step further, require a deliverable of some sort to close out the topic. In the case of the brainstorming example, a short paper comparing pros and cons of the top three ideas requires students to synthesize information contained in the board to develop their own response.

The Ohio Learning Network suggests that instructors work toward incremental and increased patterns of student-student and student-content interaction patterns. One of these techniques is to require reflection and synthesis of discussion threads from course participants. Another technique, after you feel comfortable on the discussion board, is to provide an overall framework to guide students and then let them create their own topics for discussion.