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| 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.
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