Over the years I have listened to many of you express your frustration with the reading and grading of discussion boards in you online class. This morning I had an email from an online teacher that had a particularly bad semester in the fall. She has found an interesting avenue that has helped her to get a better response from her students, she has begun to use a rubric to grade and provide feedback. She has also set more frequent deadlines "I also now require that students post by the end of the first week of each unit, with follow-ups due a week later at the end of the unit. Previously I just set one deadline at the end of the unit and told them to participate regularly leading up to it. Turns out they just needed an extra deadline to motivate them to actually do it! " She also has also set up a more rigid frame work for her discussion which she seems to find working really well, "One other change is that I don't let them create new threads - I create several threads, including a fairly general one, that they reply to. For me at least this makes the discussion better organized and easier to follow - so maybe students are finding it more accessible, too."
The use of a rubric to give them an idea of what you expect of them always helps (example rubric attached). Pesonalized feedback takes it the extra step to let the student know how they might improve their performance. I was truly disappointed to see that the discussion grader had no place to give feedback (grade only). Another idea in addition to or instead of a rubric is an exemplar in the discussion board itself. Didn't your mother always tell you to "set a good example"?
These thoughts and feedback from this instructor gave me a hmmm- moment. Discussion has always had a certain structure here but what's to say that her idea and structure might not work just as well. Think about how discussion generally works in your course; an initial post is put in and students reply to that to answer the questions for discussion. Often times they just keep on replying with no thought to whether they should reply or start a new thread. The whole situation can cause a very large, continuous thread that's very hard to follow and grade.
Ordinarily people set up a discussion, give the questions, and set up the expectations for a certain amount of participation that includes initial posts and responses to other students (usually a set number). Would it not make it easier to make several threads (including a general one) where they need to answer the question and reply to x number of classmates. I have even seen people state that student need to reply to people with less than a certain number of posts to ensure even participation.
I am sure there are many great ideas for improving discussion online. If you've got one leave a comment.
I would like to thank Christine Witkowski for allowing me to share some of her discussion ideas.
Nancy
