Creating Engaging Discussion Topics

[Debra Scott]

Share a discussion topic that you typically use in a face-to-face classroom setting. Can you foresee any challenges to adapting this discussion to a virtual learning environment? Please share your goals and objectives for the discussion.

[schmidt....@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 2:33:19 PM UTC-4, Debra Scott wrote:
> Share a discussion topic that you typically use in a face-to-face classroom setting. Can you foresee any challenges to adapting this discussion to a virtual learning environment? Please share your goals and objectives for the discussion.

In a face to face classroom setting, I am able to spot during lecture and ask the student for his or her opinion. In the virtual learning environment, I see how this can be challenging. I am unable to see the student's face, or hear the tone of their voice. I can only go off of their written response.

[Debra Scott]

Hi Carolyn,

I included this discussion topic because I feel face-to-face teachers don't always truly consider the additional challenges they will face teaching the very same lessons in an online environment. Feedback is a critical part of any learning environment. Feedback from the student to the teacher and from the teacher to the student. Building relationships in a virtual environment is difficult, but eventually whether you have a picture or not, you start putting a face to students and you learn to detect their tone of voice through their written words. It takes effort to get to that point which is why I encourage teachers new to online instruction to really give "facilitating online discussion" a lot of thought.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts,

Debra

[janhu...@gmail.com]

I have become interested in the concept of "presence" and will share an excerpt from Conrad and Donaldson's book, Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction.

Page 51 deals with the topic of "social presence" and the idea of how real a person is perceived in an online conversation. In a face to face classroom, the concept of "real" in social exchanges is not an issue. For social presence to be real in an online classroom, the instructor creates opportunities for interaction and collaboration.

Page 56 describes an "icebreaker" activity where students post a digital image that relates to why they are taking a course. They are asked to explain why they chose the particular image and what they expect to take from the course.

I can see how this activity could help establish a sense of social presence among students. They are becoming "real" to each other. I have read that presence can contribute to retention and satisfaction. The instructor has more responsibility for creating presence in an online classroom than in the face to face setting.

[Debra Scott]

I like that icebreaker activity a lot! Many students are so accustomed to hearing that question that they can probably answer it mindlessly for most courses.However, taking the time to look for a picture engages the student and encourages them to give much more thought to their reasons for taking the course.
Thanks for sharing!

[Christopher M.]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 1:33:19 PM UTC-5, Debra Scott wrote:

Share a discussion topic that you typically use in a face-to-face classroom setting. Can you foresee any challenges to adapting this discussion to a virtual learning environment? Please share your goals and objectives for the discussion.

I think any topic where you need real-time feedback will create a challenge when trying to accomplish in a virtual learning environment.  I think this would be especially true to scenario-based exercises.  As someone else already suggested, I think missing out on the non-verbal cues would make it difficult as well.

[Britt Michelsen]

Because I teach American Government, the topic of political ideology is especially important. Community college students often don't realize they have a political viewpoint until they are confronted with different viewpoints. Over the course of a semester I try to embed homework activities that oblige students to analyze a political situation from different political viewpoints. I try to get them to see that any position has both pros and cons, and that no single viewpoint is 100% correct.

To be honest, I have not yet found a way to get my online students to "experience" this as well as I have in my face to face classes, where the reaction to hearing something different is immediate and often visceral.

[Debra Scott]

For the most part, do you assign grade points for individual discussions or do you assign a comprehensive grade for several posts? 

I have been considering assigning a comprehensive grade evaluating the quality of posts (based on a very clear rubric that is posted and readily accessible from the beginning of the course) throughout the term. My goal is to encourage more authentic discussion as opposed to requiring students to weekly post a response to a discussion question that I initiated. Any thoughts on that approach would be appreciated!

[Britt Michelsen]

To be honest, I am still working this out. Just had a meeting with one of our campus instructional designers the other day to work out some ideas using D2L, which we are in the middle of rolling out. Last semester I had 90 online students and required participation in discussions pertinent to key topics in 18 chapters. I monitored the discussions and intervened in order to move the discussion away from mistaken interpretations and to calm things down, and then provided a summarized response to the class as a whole. Each student was required to post a response to one of several question options (I like to be flexible--not everyone is interested in American Government--and to post meaningful responses to two other students. I provided guidelines (not a formal rubric) and evaluated each student individually on both quantity (three meaningful posts) and quality. As a result, I was chained to my computer for three and a half months (I also had two face to face courses with 60 more students).

At the start, the discussions were not what I had hoped for, but my lengthy responses seem to have encouraged perhaps 3/4ths of the students, and by 2.34rds of the way through the course the discussions were actually quite interesting--actually better than my face to face class discussions.

How to encourage authentic discussions? I did provide them with videos and a range of activities, including simulations, and when these "connected" with the students, they plunged right in to a lively discussion. The simulations force the students to see things from the perspective of someone in government trying to do a hard job under constant public scrutiny. I suspect discussion is the beating heart of online courses, but the most challenging component of asynchronous courses.

Not sure if I responded to your question...?

[Britt Michelsen]

Here's a link that may interest you: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/art-asking-questions/?ET=facultyfocus:e37:156987a:&st=email#sthash.RKV1kLBa.dpuf

Bottom line (direct from the article):

1. Prepare questions — Too often we ask questions as they come to us.
2. Play with the questions — Questions promote thinking before they are answered. It is in the interstices between the question and the answer that minds turn.
3. Preserve good questions — If a question does generate interest, thoughtful responses, and good discussion, that’s a question to keep in some more permanent way than simply trying to remember it.
4. Ask questions that you don’t know the answer to — Students tend to think that teachers have all the answers. Could that be because we answer all their questions?
5. Ask questions you can’t answer — These questions are different from those you don’t know the answer to.
6. Don’t ask open-ended questions when you know the answer you’re looking for — Sometimes students offer answers but they aren’t the ones the teacher wanted to hear.

[Britt Michelsen]

Wow. After watching the video on adding discussions in Blackboard, I find I love that option to grade the forum rather than individual discussions (i.e. "threads," if I am understanding the term correctly). No such option in the version of D2L we are currently using, but perhaps in version 10.3, which we will be using in the fall. Until I watched this video, I did not correctly understand your question...

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 9:09:59 PM UTC-5, Debra Scott wrote:

[Debra Scott]

Fascinating article! Thanks for sharing it!

I've always loved the Socratic method, but this article gave me a little more food for thought. What if, students really believed that teachers valued their creative thoughts and opinions and that we don't consider ourselves to be all knowing. We have an area of expertise, but that of course is not the same as all knowing. I love the idea of facilitating courses because the objective is not imparting knowledge, its more about sharing ideas and building learning communities.

[juc...@gmail.com]

Does exist any free tools to work?

[Debra Scott]

Are you looking for free tools to help you create good discussion questions or a free platform for implementing discussion in the classroom?

The platform that we are currently using (Google Groups) is free! Ideally the discussion platform should be within the Learning Management System (LMS). If you are not using an LMS (i.e. D2L, Moodle, Blackboard), a platform like Google groups, Google+, FaceBook, and/or Twitter are all valuable platforms on which you can facilitate discussion.

[Adamo Andriulo]

Often in the classroom one question arose What are the essential components of civic education appropriate for a democratic society?This question foster interaction. To interact is to question, to answer, and to deliberate with civility, as well as to build coalitions and to manage conflict in a fair, peaceful manner. In a virtual learning environment.

By mixing traditional methods with new ones, we could use synchronous and asynchronous tools

that provide modern training and learning programs with two very powerful methods.

[Shilpa Raut]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at 12:03:19 AM UTC+5:30, Debra Scott wrote:
> Share a discussion topic that you typically use in a face-to-face classroom setting. Can you foresee any challenges to adapting this discussion to a virtual learning environment? Please share your goals and objectives for the discussion.

Currently majority of our training sessions are virtual, it however becomes a challenge to make these sessions interactive, particularly when you want to have a group activity or case study discussion, not all associates participate. How to overcome this challenge.

[m_a...@ludlowps.org]

I found as a college student I enjoyed my online classes better then the in class ones. It allowed me to be honest and speak out while in the classroom I found it typically dominated by a few students.

Where I work I encourage students to participate both in class and online. Some student thrive in the online environment while others struggle. I wish more teachers used digital tools so that students can actively engage, instead of listening to lectures.