Before, During, and After the Lecture: Use of Online Discussions (aka Bulletin Boards)

1. Before, During, and After the Lecture: Use of Online Discussions(aka Bulletin Boards) Robert Baird CITES EdTech Cinema Studies Feb. 2005

2. The Long Process of Evolution • Initial learning curve of discussion tool software • Long term adaptation: learning to exploit online environment Takes long time to adapt

3. Discussion Board Fundamentals (compare with f2f class): • Web-Based & Public (by default to entire class, or even entire world) • Recursive Communication (post n reply) • Asynchronous (24X7 publishing and reading) • Messages Remain Available (by default, unless instructor deletes) • Searchable • Text-based (but can easily hyperlink, illustrate, and attach files)

4. Management Issues: • Isn’t the time investment scary? you have to let the students know when they can expect to get in contact with you. Posting your office hours, setting expectations for replies to email and even letting the students know when your personal time starts and stops. Chris Weaver

5. Management Issues: The big complaint about Discussion Boards is that it takes a lot of time. It can if you are lucky. If you spend your time up front providing great content, exacting guidelines and open questions, you will find that the posting are interesting and enlightening. If you see reading the postings as a way to grade the students a little bit every week rather than reading term papers at the end of the semester, it puts the workload into perspective. Chris Weaver • Isn’t the time investment scary?

6. Management Issues: • Learning about and developing experience building and managing online discussions is key to keeping the time investment worthwhile

7. Management Issues: • Seek and try out the most efficient strategies for reading, responding, searching, printing, citing, grading, and archiving discussion posts

8. Establish a Community Learning Space: • Ethics & Behavior: • Respect • Tone • Productive argument

9. Establish a Community Learning Space: • Grading rubric: • from “participation” to specific numeric scale for assignments, midterms, and finals • For a sophisticated rubric to be shared with students see Susan Colaric’s 4 level guide at http://www.coe.ecu.edu/lsit/colaric/FORC/InstructionalStrategies.html

10. Establish a Community Learning Space: • Expectations: quantity, quality, response time, grammar & spelling, writing style on range from formal to informal students get credit for providing peers with additional citations must tell students about compliment sandwich!

11. Establish a Community Learning Space: • Expectations are established by the Instructor’s • Guidelines and rubric • Initial, get-things-going postings in new topics • Modeling of posting, responding, critiquing, and so forth • Grading • Praising & referencing of student work • Cautionary emails to slackers and belligerents

12. (Must Have) Specific Teaching and Learning Goals: • Integration of online discussions with classroom discussion and course work • Give students some % of course credit for work in discussion boards

13. Building Discussion Topics: It’s like laying out a garden—if you don’t plan you get an overgrown garden instead of a well-designed garden

14. Building Discussion Topics: • Types: • Icebreakers & community building (cyber café; introductions; trivia) • Help desk (content, course, teaching questions) • Instructor/content-driven (chapter questions; online assignments; responses to readings/problem sets) • Student group work (scheduling and coordination; project planning) • Student/content driven (show and tell; current events tie-ins)

15. Discussions should Support Your Global Teaching Strategies: Want to Improve Your Lectures? Listen to Your Students and Adapt Lectures Accordingly

16. Discussions should Support Your Global Teaching Strategies: • Validate student successes and red flag confusions through • your responses • referencing and quoting of students postings • ongoing grading • offering best posting awards each week • incorporating student ideas into your lectures

17. Discussions should Support Your Global Teaching Strategies: Expose the Student Learning (and not learning) and Problem Solving Processes

18. Discussions should Support Your Global Teaching Strategies: Achieve More Frequent, Extensive, and Detailed Student Feedback

19. Discussions should Support Your Global Teaching Strategies: Provide a Time and Place for Modeling, Observing, and Coaching Student Processes and Performance

20. Resources “Tips for Facilitating Online Discussions” by Leslie Bowman and George Paris http://teachers.net/gazette/AUG02/bowmanconway.html “Assessment of Online Discussions” by Leslie Bowman and George Paris http://teachers.net/gazette/OCT02/bowmanconway.html "Using Focused Web-Based Discussions to Enhance Student Interaction and Deep Understanding" by Caroline Hodges Persell of New York University http://edtech.cites.uiuc.edu/staging/edtech/teaching_learning/pedagogy/persell_soc_disc_board.pdf Discussion Board Decision Tree, by Chris Weaver of East Carolina University http://www.ecu.edu/elearning/discussionboard/ “Developing a Learning Community” by Susan Colaric http://www.coe.ecu.edu/lsit/colaric/FORC/InstructionalStrategies.html