One concern about the use of online classes is the lack of direct conversation in an online environment. Students learn by testing and defending their ideas. In an online course, if there is no forum to present and defend your ideas, how will you know if your understandings are accurate, and how will you know what you do not know? There are two avenues for discussion that have been used in online courses; the first is discussion boards, and the second is scheduled meetings in an online environment.
The Discussion Board for Online Conversation
In a discussion board, the instructor posts an assignment or a question to encourage conversation. Students are expected to respond to the subject or post their assignments to elicit feedback. Frequently, there are guidelines as to how many posts or replies each student must make to other students, the length of the post, and even specific points that need to be made. In my personal experience, the discussion board sounds like a great idea, but without instructor presence and participation, it frequently fizzles out. Students write thoughtful posts initially, but quickly learn to do the minimum requirement if there is no instructor presence and especially if the motivator to participate is points or a grade. Scanning multiple students’ online classes shows that the vast majority of them do not read the online posts, even if they are in reply to something that they have posted. In one of my current classes, the instructor set up a discussion board for each chapter to encourage student interaction and to facilitate asking questions. So far, with two weeks left in the course, there have been a total of two posts.
A Discussion Board that encourages conversation
There are some very effective uses of discussion boards. The easiest of which is a forum to answer student questions, either by other students or by the instructors. In the graduate school where I worked, discussion boards were used in most of the classes. The students still participate in classes, but as they are active learning classes without lectures, the students frequently will have questions while reading the preparatory content and after the discussion in class. By having the students post a title on their discussion post and having a strong instructor presence, the discussion board has been used very effectively to answer student questions and encourage participation. One reason that this discussion board is working so well is that there is an active instructor presence and students receive timely answers to their questions. Some may argue that this type of discussion board is merely online office hours and does not encourage active thinking, answering questions, and defending an argument.
And one that doesn’t
The second type of discussion board is trickier to implement successfully. This type of discussion board requires students to post short answers or essay answers to questions and then respond to each other’s responses. Adult learning theory states that learners must be motivated by a desire to understand instead of a desire to earn points, but getting a student to respond to a discussion post without some benefit is tricky. An active instructor presence is required as well as transmission of information that the student clearly values.
Anonymous responses?
Should the online discussion board allow anonymous responses? The benefit of anonymous responses is that the students may feel more comfortable responding and therefore increase conversation. The drawback would be that allowing anonymous responses may allow some students to use the discussion board to make comments that they would not make in person.
Confidential responses would enable the poster to be anonymous to fellow students, but not to the instructor. I am not sure this would serve the intended purpose. A possible way to mitigate some drawbacks of anonymous responses is to set clear boundaries early in the class. I would advise being very specific about what is and is not appropriate. Generational differences and the current generation’s comfort level with the online environment and sharing may lead to different understandings of an “appropriate” post.
Tone
Everyone has probably experienced the misreading of tone and intent in emails. In the written online environment, sarcasm and joking may be misinterpreted and be a turnoff to students. An instructor may think they are being funny and trying to make the student feel more comfortable, but, in actuality, the student was asking a simple question and no longer feels comfortable doing so in the future.
The Future
The best users of a discussion board are learners who are self-driven and inquisitive. Learners who are seeking to understand the content and not merely working to see how many points they can accumulate. These learners must be comfortable in a social environment that encourages interaction and is non-hierarchal. They must feel strongly that knowledge is constructed and requires the input of all, not instructor driven with the learner’s role being a recipient of information. As more and more classrooms move to active learning and a flipped classroom style, I wonder if we will see more effective use of the discussion board in the online classroom.