[MUSIC] >> Online discussion boards are for both students and teachers, great opportunity for communication, peer learning, and active engagement in the class content. In this episode, we examine the role of online discussions in the learning process. And we also, offer some useful strategies for effective moderation to maximize student participation and motivation. >> When you're in the classroom, you'll find that just through, you know, group dynamics, some students will tend to dominate the conversation, and more reticent students, shy students, students who feel like that are less articulate or they're having trouble with the language, may not participate. >> Someone who, for whom English isn't the first language or is a bit shy, or might not kind of respond so quickly, whereas online, they can do that. They can think about what, what they want to say. If there's words they don't know, they can go and look them up, and all those kinds of things. >> They use discussion boards to post questions to communicate with their peers. To sometimes they just have comments that they'd like to share with their peers. >> What the, the virtual space can offer is greater opportunity for communication. For sharing ideas and for mapping ideas against each other and contesting ideas. >> One of the mistakes teachers make when they first start using the internet for their teaching is, is to spend far too much time engaging with their students on a one to one basis. That's why online discussion groups and collaborative workspaces where student, individual student questions can be answered by an academic, but for the benefit of everybody who's in the unit of study. That's one of the ways that you can manage your time effectively. >> Because I can't do that one on one with 1,000 students, it allows a lot of people to see any information that a lecturer, or tutor feeds back to an individual. >> Everybody's got an equal opportunity, and a lot of people can contribute at once. And that means everybody can participate in an active way, instead of just listening to someone else making a contribution. >> My students in a class of a thousand can get very isolated. This is a community function if you like that allows them to connect, and answer each other's questions. So, there's some peer learning going on there, as well. >> Peer to peer discussions were very helpful for the students in trying to sort out perhaps their concerns or questions about the content that was being covered, so it allowed them to go a little further, a little deeper into that course content. And in that way, I think it was a very useful learning strategy. >> The whole point of our online discussions is, is for the students to talk to each other and learn while they're talking. And, for me to gauge their understanding. >> It's really important to emphasize that when you are teaching online. The attendance isn't measured in the same way, as it would be in a face to face class. You can't just log on. We don't know if you're online or not, so you have to physically post something. >> When students, logged on, on the first day of that tutorial and saw that there was something already there, other students had engaged. It very much encouraged them to do the same. If they logged on and found that nothing was there, they didn't necessarily feel that it was worth their time. >> You only need to get a couple of students in there who really engage in it, and that seems to bring along the others. >> What motivates me in a discussion to participate is if somebody responds to what I've just written. And that response doesn't necessarily have to be positive and gushy, it can be disputing what I've just said. >> Rather than, you know, going in and targeting specific students, if say, you know, 10% of students hadn't responded, I'd post a general comment to the message board congratulating people who had participated and, and summarizing the sort of the key gains that have been made that point about those contributions and then reminding people gently that the, the deadline was x date. >> I very rarely set it to occur at a particular time. I'll let it extend for a period time. I might say, this discussion is going to be limited for a week. >> One of the things about having this textual base and also this asynchronous way of working, where I will right some feedback or a message and the students, then write some response to that. Is that everyone, including me, but I'll say particularly the students get the chance to think about what it is they want to say. >> Because of that element way, you can sit back and then think and then respond to someone. The discussion quality is really high. >> At the beginning, I give reasonably careful criteria as to what I expect them to be showing, demonstration in their online discussions. >> Something that I emphasize at the beginning of the semester is that, I would like all posts to be a maximum 200 words. Otherwise, you will find students just going on a rant and you basically, have to read it and provide some kind of comment. So, emphasizing that 'simple is better is really important. >> What you need to make sure is that, if they are putting a question that's about some content or about an assessment [UNKNOWN] but they're getting very quick responses. So what I tend to do, is I tend to have a number of different discussion board threads, and I will have each of those moderated by a different person. >> Because we have so many discussion questions, for the assignment, what I tend to do is then when they repeated, is I will collate all the questions, so that the students aren't having to read over and over and over the same question. >> [BLANK_AUDIO] >> If there's a discussion going on on the website that's picked up something that's happened during the class, and it's still alive at the end of the week, when your class was at the beginning of the week, I feel like that learnings taking place, outside of the classroom, and extending [INAUDIBLE] we hope to have happen, but with what evidence. He said it's happening in front of us.
