Overview
Faculty seem to have a love hate relationship with Discussion Boards. Discussion Boards were created so online students could interact with one another and their instructor as if having a face to face classroom discussion. Often, faculty and students feel trapped and bored by only using this one form of interaction. However, discussion boards can be a great tool for engagement, knowledge transfer, practice, and community building when designed and facilitated in creative ways.
Also, please visit our blog, Digital Dialogues, to learn more about Discussion Boards!
The Why, What, How, and When of Discussion Boards
Why: It is important for you as the instructor to know why you are using the Discussion Board. Knowing why will help you create activities that match this purpose. It is equally important for students to know why they are doing this work. Letting them know that the purpose of a particular Discussion Board is to practice a skill, get feedback, communicate with others, show competency, or gain a different perspective.
What: Discussion Boards can be anything you want them to be. Using video discussion, sharing resources, or getting peer review on paper section, really they can be anything. The important part is that “what” the discussion board is should match to your learning objectives and what you want students to get out of discussing with one another.
How: How you use Discussion Boards is unique to your course and the options are endless. You may use it for reading comprehension and discussion, integrating life experience and course knowledge, completing Just In Time teaching responses, turning in homework, for part of the class, for every class, and many other ways. The important part is that the students know why and how it will be used, that you are using it intentionally, and that it matches to course objectives.
Ideas of how to use discussion boards include:
- Small group work
- Student presentations
- Clarification
- Community Building
- Peer Review
- Every week, 4 times a semester, just in the beginning to form relationships
- Invite a guest speaker to participate
- Student lead discussion boards
When: Though routine is helpful for students, deciding when to use a Discussion Board does not have to be an all or nothing process. You can employ the Discussion Board when it is most helpful for the learning objectives, topic, type of activity, or time in the semester. You may even use it spontaneously if something comes up in the course or a current event happens that would benefit from full class discussion.
Discussion Board Expectations
If you use the discussion board in your online course, make sure your expectations of use and assessment are clear. Share with student what they need to post, how many replies you expect, how often, and when their discussions are due. Some faculty leave the discussion expectations wide open and others are prescriptive, but either way make sure it is clear to your students.
In addition to what you expect with regard to how they use the discussion board, let them know when and why. If you want them to post something by Wednesday and then have them respond to peers by Saturday, make sure this is clear. If there is a certain number of posts and replies that will aid in their learning, tell them exactly how many posts or replies you want by when. State how many times and when you want them to logon throughout the week. Logging in multiple times a week allows students to respond to other students replies and create a back and forth conversation. Also, inform them that you are asking for these types of response in order to build community, have them demonstrate their knowledge, practice a skill, and any other reason.
I like to tell my students that I expect their posts to grow and improve over the course of the semester and in response to my feedback. I encourage them to be critical thinkers and offer alternative opinions. Students tend to “cheerlead” one another by saying, “nice comment”, “I agree”, and other types of supportive comments. I encourage them to continue supporting one another but that they can disagree and ask questions as well to build critical dialogue. I acknowledge that this can be difficult but that it will pay off with a rich conversation.
In online platforms, students are used to be very casual and often speak in incomplete sentences. Share with students what type of language you expect by providing examples, modeling, and setting clear expectations about what academic, professional, or casual language is and when to use each type of language.
Here are some sample discussion board instructions and how to videos from Dr. Becky Cottrell, an MSU Spanish Instructor. Please feel free to share them with your students:
Discussion Board Feedback
Following a discussion can be a time consuming task. If asking for a certain answer or display of knowledge acquisition, checking the board can be a daunting task so as not to miss someone who is incorrect or influencing the answers of others. If managing a sensitive discussion topic, the instructor may feel they have to catch and interpret every comment so as not to shut down conversation or offend students. This can be very difficult.
Both frequent instructor participation and feedback are recommended for effective discussion boards. Make sure you are checking in throughout the week. Model asking questions that encourage them to dig deeper and support their perspectives. Bring them back to the textbook by asking for specific examples. You can also redirect conversation if it is off topic, inappropriate, or feeling unmanageable. These suggestions do not mean that you have to reply to every student and be in discussion everyday. It means that you should be present in the discussion and make sure that you reply and are in conversation with every student at least twice over the course of the semester.
When needing to correct a post or correct the overall understanding of a concept on the discussion board, it is recommended to both respond in the discussion board but also to create an announcement or email. This assures that all students will see the correction. Many students do not go back in a discussion or review past posts meaning that they can miss your feedback.
Many instructors do minimal posting in the actual discussion board but instead provide a summary email or announcement that highlights the main points from the discussion board, unique perspectives, incorrect responses, or other important take aways. If grading the discussion board in Blackboard, you can provide private feedback to students giving them ways to improve their discussion writing or expressing care and concern for certain answers, lack of participation, or complementing their leadership on the board. Instructor feedback and discussion board participation is a great way to boost your instructor presence which improves student engagement and course satisfaction.
Making Discussion Boards Inclusive
Tips from Jesse Stommel, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington.
- Build a community of care.
- Ask genuine, open-ended questions.
- Wait for answers.
- Let conversation wander.
- Model what it looks like to be wrong and to acknowledge when you’re wrong.
- Recognize that the right to speak isn’t distributed equally.
- Make listening visible
Grading
Be clear with students how their discussions will be graded. Will you give points for each response, for overall participation, for quality of posts, or for correct answers? Will you deduct for grammar and errors? What are the criteria you are using? Some folks have discussion board grading rubrics that they share with students to provide those expectations is a clear format.