The Discussion Board (a Mash-up of Perspectives): The Third Pillar of Digital Learning

Up For Debate

All courses are ecologies of learning. There is an interrelationship between each activity in the course – each activity affects the other. In order to get the most out of online learning I would suggest that there are three main pillars that should be a part of most courses – especially in social sciences and the humanities. These three pillars are: (1) Journaling, (2) Blogging, and (3) Discussion Boards.

I see each of these online activities as being interrelated and as contributing to different aspects of learning.

While journaling is an interior activity of intimate learning, between the teacher and the student, and blogging is an exterior activity of public learning, in which the student learns by teaching, the discussion board is an exterior activity of interactive learning, consisting largely of brainstorming between students.

The key to writing a good discussion board post is that builds on what other people are saying and it adds something new. It does not have to agree with previous posts, but it should respond to them in some way – either by providing a new spin to what has already been said, or by providing an alternative perspective that contradicts other perspectives, or by taking the thread in a different direction altogether while staying on topic. Discussion board posts are short blasts of ideas and information. Discussion board posts are best when they are interactive. The question that should be going through someone’s mind, as they are writing the post, is “What am I introducing to this discussion that will be new?”

As students bring different perspectives and experiences to the virtual or physical classroom there is an opportunity for highly creative thought to occur. Creative insights often occur where there is a mash-up of ideas. The most useful discussions take place when people notice different details about the content they have all been exposed to. This activity is particularly useful because each person is likely to notice something that someone else missed. A classroom of full of different observations and impressions helps all of us to “see” things more broadly originally. Usually it is the details that each person notices that makes a discussion board post interesting.

Just as journaling makes digital learning an intimate interaction between the teacher and the student; and blogging allowing students to teach the teacher, and other students and to disseminate ideas far and wide; the discussion board uses the digital environment to foster collaborative learning and creative interaction.

The discussion board works best if it is thought of as being a mental mash-up. There are different ways to go about this. The most obvious form of mash-up is when several people have different perspectives on the same content. When this occurs, participants will be most effective if they take time to examine how they arrived at their different conclusions, interpretations, or opinions. What “evidence” were they looking at? At what point did they come to see things as they do? What experiences led them to their conclusion? What are they basing their conclusion on?

By the way, these are also good questions for a person to ask himself or herself when writing journal entries. It is all interactive.

When a person takes the time to describe how they arrived at their conclusions the discussion provides more insight than it does when people are simply contradicting one another. As I said before, details are important. It is useful to discuss the different details that caught our attention and impacted us in different ways. It is also useful to discuss our differences in how we chose to interpret those details.

Another approach to this interactive mash-up of perspectives on the discussion board is when students have the same observations, conclusions, and interpretations, but build on what the previous student has said by providing new examples. When this happens in a discussion board thread the interpretations that students have are mostly similar, but the new information that each student brings to the discussion consists of bringing different applications of the perspective to the discussion.

In either case, contrast or agreement, the intellectual mash-up is one in which each participant adds to the overall discussion by introducing something new, not by merely agreeing with what the person who went before them said.

It is so important that students introduce something new in each discussion board post that I tend to give very little, if any, credit to posts that merely say, in essence, “me too.”

It basically comes down to this: If you cannot add something new to what people have already said, by presenting an alternative perspective or interpretation, then add something new by providing a new “spin”, or new angles to an existing line of thought – but always, always, always bring something new to the discussion.

Students will often find that ideas that bubbled up in their journal, or in the discussion board, can be refined and reworked into compelling blog posts. Likewise, discussion board activity, and responses to one’s blog, can send a student back to his or her journal to reflect on these ideas in a quieter and more intimate setting. This is why the most effective use of journaling, blogging, and participation on the discussion board is to make these activities interactive and to allow ideas that are developed in one activity to feed off of those developed in another.

It is hard to assign a grade value for creativity and originality. It is practically antithetical to try to grade brainstorming, where students are riffing off of each other. Still, to keep people focused and to ensure quality contributions to the discussion board, it is necessary to have rubric for this activity. My rubric for discussion boards tends to look something like this:

The discussion board activity will be graded based on the following criteria: (1) staying on the topic for the thread, (2) providing new insights into content from the course, (3) explaining how you arrived at your perspective, interpretation, or opinion, and (4) commenting and giving meaningful responses to other people’s posts. 

I generally encourage at least one discussion board post per class session. Because the discussion board works best if it develops as quick blasts of new information, yet these blasts should be substantive, most posts will average about 150 words. I usually allow discussion boards to represent about 20% of the final grade for the course.

C. Matthew Hawkins

The Public Blog (Learning Through Teaching): The Second Pillar of Digital Learning

Image Credit: Developmental Institute

All courses are ecologies of learning. There is an interrelationship between each activity in the course – each activity affects the other. In order to get the most out of online learning I would suggest that there are three main pillars that should be a part of most courses – especially in social sciences and the humanities. These three pillars are: (1) Journaling, (2) Blogging, and (3) Discussion Boards.

I see each of these online activities as being interrelated and as contributing to different aspects of learning.

While journaling is an intimate activity between the teacher and the student, blogging is a public and external activity that allows the student to become the teacher. If a journal is a private record, and an interior reflection on, what a student is learning a blog is the public face of that process of learning.

I have found that, in every class, there are enough students who produce great content in their blogs – from several different perspectives – so that I can use their blogs as instruction tools and as “texts” for all participants in the class to think about. The blogs that students produce can show all of us new ways of thinking and can deepen our learning.

If digital learning can be criticized for being too impersonal, it can also be acknowledged for its ability to encourage people to be producers of unique content. Digital platforms make it possible for all of us to be publishers and producers of content and ideas. Blogging is an effective way of exploiting this potential in the (virtual or physical) classroom.

Being in an academic setting, however, teachers must be able to identify – with reasonable precision – what kind of the learning a student’s blog represents and how it should be evaluated for credit toward successful completion of the course.

My rubric for blogging tends to look something like this:

Blogs will be graded based on (1) how well you address the questions you were asked to write about in this blog; (2) how well you engage the content (videos, printed or digital texts, etc.) in this course; and (3) how readable your blog posts are – “readability” includes minimal typographical and grammatical errors, clear writing, and logical sentence and paragraph structures.

The work of more advanced students will typically be evaluated based on how well they engage topics and themes from the course, how well they engage theoretical perspectives we are using and exploring, how well they situate course content within theoretical categories, how well they are able to contrast and compare those theoretical categories; and how well they are able to critique their selection and use of sources (this may include a brief annotated bibliography as one of their blog posts).

I have found that it is generally useful to require approximately 8 blog posts per semester, which generally comes down to one post every two weeks. Blog posts should average about 700 words.

Because blogs are public expressions of what students are exploring and thinking about I usually make an eight-entry blog worth 40% of the final grade in the course; this may include an activity where students give a presentation of their blog before a live audience.

I think there are three reasons why blogging is important; first, blogging positions students as active learners rather than as mere passive consumers of what someone else is telling them. Secondly, a good measure of how well a person has learned something is whether or not they are able to teach it to others. The third reason that blogging is important is because one of the most effective ways to learn is by teaching.

C. Matthew Hawkins

Journaling for Intellectual Intimacy: The First Pillar of Digital Learning

Image Credit: High heeled Traveler.blogspot.com

All courses are ecologies of learning. There is an interrelationship between each activity in the course – each activity affects the other. In order to get the most out of online learning I would suggest that there are three main pillars that should be a part of most courses – especially in social sciences and the humanities. These three pillars are: (1) Journaling, (2) Blogging, and (3) Discussion Boards.

I see each of these online activities as being interrelated and as contributing to different aspects of learning.

Journaling is an intimate activity between the teacher and the student. When I use the journaling tool for an online learning platform, such as Blackboard or Desire 2 Learn, I prefer to make those journals private – just between the teacher and the student. I do not choose the option where anyone in the class can see another student’s journal. The journal should help the student to become more aware of his or her process of learning. The journal should help the student track their own learning process and to take control over it, rather than waiting for the teacher to orchestrate every aspect of the student’s learning. Journals should encourage students to think about themselves as being active learners.

Journal entries also help the teacher to understand how different students learn. Students should describe the questions that arise as they engage the content in the course and the steps they have taken to deepen their understanding of that content. They should especially write about the mistakes they have made or misimpressions they have had, and what they have learned in the process of correcting these errors. Often they will conclude that their assumptions were not entirely wrong, but that they were too limited. Writing journal entries can help a student understand the limitations of ideas that they might otherwise apply too broadly and uncritically.

When students have an opinion, or draw a conclusion, it is useful for them to take the time to use their journals to write about how they arrived at that opinion or conclusion. What did they base their conclusions on? What led them to their conclusion? What evidence, examples, or experiences played a role in their arriving at their conclusions? What doubts or caveats do they have about the conclusions they have drawn? All of these questions will lead to powerful material to explore in their journals.

Students will often find that ideas that bubble up in their journal will lead to better blog posts. They will also find that interaction on the discussion board will trigger thoughts that they want to explore more deeply in their journal.  The combination of journaling, blogging, and participation on the discussion board is an interactive process that allows ideas to feed off of one another.

One of the biggest criticisms of the use of online learning platforms for instruction, even when they are coupled with instruction in the classroom, is that they are impersonal and reduce the amount of human interaction in education. I see writing journal entries as being a way to counter this problem of impersonality. The communication between the teacher and the student, in the student’s journal, can be a highly intimate intellectual experience. The teacher can learn more about how much effort the student is putting into the course, and how well they understand the key concepts, than any activity in an actual classroom will reveal. Journaling can help the teacher to know the student on a deeper level. The feedback that the teacher provides to the student, through the student’s digital journal, can be highly personalized and can provide a strong vehicle for individualized instruction.

However, even though journaling should actually make it easier for students to do well in a course, and the activity is a highly effective method of studying, most students see journaling is simply being additional work they are required to do in order to get through the course. Because they may not, at first, be motivated to keep good online journals I typically assign a grade value and a “rubric” for journaling. It usually looks like this:

Journals will be graded based on (1) how well you identify what you didn't know; (2) the steps you have taken to learn more about what you didn't know; and (3) further questions that came to you as a result of the answers you have found. Basically, you should write about your learning activities as you go through the course. You should have at least one journal entry for each unit of instruction in this course -- each entry should address at least one of the three questions listed above. By the end of the course there should be at least one journal entry for each of those three questions.

I usually suggest that each journal entry should run approximately 500 words, but because the nature of journaling is exploratory it is not unusual for entries to be much longer – perhaps 1,000 words – as the student writes in order to figure out what they want to know, what they want to say, and how they want to say it.

Good journal entries will show that the student is thinking and will make me more sympathetic toward the other digital work they have done in the course.

Because journal entries are records of the internal process of learning, and they give me insight into the depth of student engagement, I generally assign 40% of the final grade to journal activity.

C. Matthew Hawkins