“Caffiene for the Classroom” was a great session on designing and running excellent online discussions with Dr. Chris Toledo from Illinois State Uni at the NECC 2008 Conference this year in San Antonio.
Check out the whole presentation at:
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com
She uses “Interactive Virtual Courseware” to run her discussions. Opensource, free.
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/intro
She loves online discussions becasue you’ve always got an archive of student writing, thinking, achievement etc.
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/caffeine
She loves online discussions because she sees them as promoting critical, higher-order, constructive, and connective thinking.
She also sees them as breaking down ethnocentricity, increasing tolerance and group diversity (a link with the opening keynote on the wisdom of crowds)
Use Online Discussions to Promote Thinking
- Critical Thinking – provide opportunities for learner to explore their experiences through reflection focused by careful designed prompts
- Higher Order Thinking – requiring students to use creativity, decision-making and problem-solving skills, generalizing applications and justifying those
- Constructive Thinking – provide opportunities for students to construct knowledge from their personal experience within the context of social interaction and collaboration
- Connective (Distributed) Thinking – provide opportunities for students to process multiple perspectives, integrate personal experience and interpretations with others’ perspectives, allowing them to experience the synergy of connected cognition
Adapted from http://www.emoderators.com/moderators/muilenburg.html
Ways of Using Online Discussions.
- As conversation starters
- have students read and process information before classroom interactions
- students are prepared for in-class discussions – resulting in better use of classroom interactions
- To embellish a topic
- expand the depth of information
- outside of class – student discovery
- in class – clarify issues (in class) that surfaced in the online discussions
- individualize instruction
- provide safe environment for shy and/or introverted students – many times they will blossom in the online environment
- adapt to the needs, strengths, and weaknesses of students
- expand the depth of information
- For addressing sensitive, controversial, or personal issues
- safe environment for topics that are difficult to discuss f2f
- anonymous or pseudonym postings
- To conclude a topic, lesson, or unit
- wrap up learning
- check for understanding
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/organizing
Types of Discussions
- Individual
- Group
- One question
- Many questions
- Digital Image
- Audio – podcast, audio clip
- Video – YouTube, TeacherTube
- Asynchronous
- Synchronous
- Teacher-controlled and supervised
- Student-controlled and supervised (teacher in the background)
Discussion Configurations
- Complete class
- Groups of 3-4
- Heterogeneous groups
- Homogeneous groups
Organising Discussions
Managing huge discussions. Huge numbers of relationships.
Divide students into groups of 3 – 4 ( you can post in your group; you can lurk in any group).
Switch the groups around after a bit to encourage diversity.
Stay with one question, not many questions? Or questions that build on one question.
Give them an image or picture, audio podcast, video clip – and they can respond.
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/skillsassess
Developing Discussion Skills
Define Expectations
- How often they must participate?
- The norm is 3 posts per week; first post due mid-week, others due at the end of the week
- What will a quality post look like?
- Subject headings
- Addressing who they are responding to
- Name of recipient
- Author signature
- Response length requirements
- A minimum – for the “just getting by” students
- A maximum – for the “I can’t stop” students – the dominating conversationalists
- What does a poor quality post look like? What students should avoid?
- Provide examples of good and bad posts
- Model – and explain – what you want them to do
- Rules for civility
- Decorum – some students will say things online they would never say f2f – so teach them that the same standards apply to both f2f and online discussions
- No bullying
- No flaming
- No name-calling
- No cursing
- No blaming
- Decorum – some students will say things online they would never say f2f – so teach them that the same standards apply to both f2f and online discussions
- Writing style
- No text-message shorthand
- Proper written English
- Use word processor spell check, then copy and paste into discussion
- No text-message shorthand
Explain ….
- The differences between affect and cognition
- Address emotional responses vs. cognitive responses
- Help students focus on being objective rather than reactive
- Provide examples of feeling answers and thinking answers
- Be specific
- Avoid using “feel” for “think”
- Not “What do you feel about …” Rather “What do you think about …”
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/Questions
Assessment of Online Discussions
Discussions should always count for part of the grade. Weight discussions enough to produce external motivation. As they become engaged (and they will), the motivation will become internal.
My rubric
Nick Toledo’s rubric
Other rubrics
- http://mason.gmu.edu/~ndabbagh/wblg/online-protocol.html
- http://lpc1.clpccd.cc.ca.us/lpc/blackboard/discussions/discuss_rubrics.htm
- http://www.luthersem.edu/rnysse/OT2116-50/ParticipationRubric.htm
- http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/discussionrubric.html
Online Discussions – Question Design
AVOID …
- Questions that can be answered yes or no
- Asking, “What do you think?” No interaction with the material/concepts required
- Multiple questions – divide them up into separate posts
ENGAGE students with ….
- Open-ended questions
- If you were … , what would you see?
- What do you think is better, x or y? Why?
- Sentence completion
- What most struck me about the reading was … , because …
- A debate
- Devil’s advocate roll playing
- Socratic questioning – from Does Your Dog Bite?
- Teach students to use this approach to increase the level of critical thinking
- Clarification questions
- Let me see if I understand you; do you mean … or … ?
- How does this relate to our problem/discussion/issue?
- Would this be an example?
- Would you say more about that?
- Revealing assumptions
- What is being assumed? What might we assume instead?
- You seem to be assuming … . Is that a correct interpretation?
- All of your reasoning depends on the idea that … . What could you have based your reasoning on instead?
- Is that always the case? Why do you think that assumption holds here?
- Providing reasons and evidence
- Provide an example?
- What evidence is there for that?
- What other information is needed?
- Who is in a position to judge the validity of that statement/stance?
- Viewpoints and perspectives
- Does … imply … ?
- If that happened, what else would happen as a result? Why?
- What is an alternative?
- If … and … are the case, then what might also be true?
- Implications and consequences
- How can we find out?
- Can we break this question down at all?
- To answer this question, what other questions must we answer first?
- Is this the most relevant question, or is there an underlying question which might take precedence?
THE BOTTOM LINE ….
- Encourage students to be active learners
- Design questions that require higher level critical thinking skills
- Trying designing a lesson or unit around a question or set of questions that begin in the online discussion forum
- Teach students Socratic questioning skills
- Address discussion entries in class – this is the real caffeine
QuickTopic
ProBoards
Boardhost
Moodle
Faculty Central
Blackboard
References
http://necc08oldisc.wikispaces.com/ref
Does Your Dog Bite? Creating Good Questions for Online Discussions, Dr. Cheri Toledo
A Framework for Designing Questions for Online Learning, Lin Muilenburg & Dr. Zane Berge
Facilitating Critical Thinking in Your Online Discussions, Dr. MaryFriend Shepard
Teaching Without Borders, some interesting perspectives
