Do We Need to Have a Discussion?

Much of the day-to-day work when teaching online is running the discussion forum for the class. It requires even more work to ensure that student contributions are thoughtful and carry the conversation forward. This is also, perhaps, the most thankless portion of the job.

Discussion plays an important social role in the class. As mentioned in the page about motivating students, social interactions are a strong intrinsic motivator that will help students succeed and maintain interest in your classes. Discussion is the easiest (but maybe not the most effective) way to add that social aspect to a class.

Carmen does offer other social tools to help bring your students together. One of the most commonly used is Carmen Connect, a tool that allows you to video conference with multiple people. This tool does require set times, so instructors will have to be ready to lead the same discussion multiple times a week (and didn’t we all get tired of that after DSLing?)

Another option is group work. Carmen offers several tools to make group projects possible, the newest being integration with Microsoft Office which makes tradition group assignments (like papers and presentations) easy to organize. Many courses use CarmenWiki as a way to let students collaborate on making webpages or for each student to run a blog. One idea to make a social assignment is to have students critique or comment on each other’s work. Maybe divide them into small groups and have them take turns where a different student writes a response to the materials for the week and the other members of the group comment on that response. This can be done using blogs on CarmenWiki or by allowing students to make pages and discussions in Carmen.

Finally, some tricks can be used to improve discussions. The first is to divide the class into small groups for each discussion (you can do this under the People tab in Carmen). Students will be less overwhelmed by the size of a discussion if they are in groups of 10 instead of 50. Adding variety to discussion topics can also encourage student engagement. Finally, keeping expectations clear and giving constructive feedback early in the class can pay off in less work down the line. When you have issues with students’ posts, make sure your feedback is specific. If a student writes an excellent post, give specific and positive feedback so that they (and others in the discussion) know the ways to succeed.

Have you used any of the tools or techniques in the post? Let me know how it went by leaving a comment!

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