Online Discussion Boards

Online courses utilize 21st century information and communications technology (ICTs to be able to create a virtual space known as a discussion board. It is where students can go to participate in a discussion on a subject. There are however different types of discussions. While some types of discussions can be informal and require just a few words to form a greeting or a shout out, others require formality. Such types of formal discussions take on the characteristics of social discourse. These are likely to be sustained for longer periods of time and employ critical analysis of a subject or topic.

Q: How can discussion boards be used to enhance student interaction?

A: First of all, an instructional designer has to be purposeful when planning how students will participate in an online discussion forum. Establishing a goal to promote critical thinking in the participants will set the stage for 1) how to design an activity in civil discourse and 2) how to get students to interact with each other.

One such activity they can plan to use and one that will enhance student participation and interaction is the "Moderate the Discussion Board". In this activity, the online moderator has a role to guide and facilitate discussions on a particular topic that is posted on the discussion board. While they do not initially post, they have to provide incentives to other participants and show them how they must utilize critical thinking skills, remain civil as not to post offensively, and respond with reasonable and justifiable arguments to the other participants' posts. In fact, what moderators are doing is creating a safe place for healthy interactions between participants. Moderators also keep the momentum of the conversations by steering or deepening the level of thinking on the subject thereby sustaining the conversation over a period of time. They also use their judgement and must intervene when necessary to keep the intended flow of the conversation. To an extent the moderator remains neutral and will simply follow a set of guidelines to accomplish his or her duties.

The flipside of civil discourse is Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is in fact a type of communication that uses fear and coercion, ridicule and persuasive language to make someone feel threatened, intimidated, or weak. That is just the reality of it. This is why this course is delivered with extensive embedded video explanations and guiding thoughts to move people to action. It is hard to find someone who has not experienced some form of bullying. But with 21st century move to use of ICTs to facilitate learner-learner interactions, Technology leaders have to move swiftly to update policies and to educate the populace about the severe and haunting realities of cyberbullying which we know have led to deaths of thousands of innocent young people. It becomes important to set guidelines and to teach children from a young age how to check in with their feelings and their emotions. Which with that being said, we also need to continually add to the curriculum making the time to promote safe, healthy, and ethical use of the Internet and our personal devices.

What types of Collaborations impacted our course?

The use of the online discussion board has been a powerful integration in the LMS. In the Global Digital Citizens unit, several lessons required the use of the discussion board as a way not only for learners to communicate but also for them to collaborate. Another form of media facilitated the use of extensive collaborations. In what situations or context were two or more people expected to collaborate. The first assignment was the group moderation activity where group members created a governing contract for the work, then divvied up duties to complete the task. In the end a group was able to moderate the civil communication that occurred between other participants on the discussion board, and also evaluate the level of participation and proper assessment of their performance.

Other types of Collaboration in this course

Using Web 2.0 tools

Using Social collaborative tools

Social Annotation Software What is that? The Diigo Social annotation tool.

Do you know what TAGS are? They are words that you can use to help you organize your research by topic. Imagine you are doing research on plants or studying Botany; then you read several journal articles on those topics. You might not read them in their entirety because you can come back later to do that. But before you leave the articles on the web to have to reread them all over, you can make a smarter move by using tags. Social annotation software allows one to "change" the web by annotating the documents and articles found there. It is like writing in a book margin. You create a "Tag" and place them like a note will help you to mark that document for when you will need it again. That mark is the form of a TAG. You can create a tag, botany or plants, etc. That way they are saved by topic or tag which are searcheable on the Diigo website. In the example below I am using Hypothes.is instead. I will show you a video of how to use it. I have also imported some of my resources from Hypothes.is.

Hypothes.is resources for my course ETC 645