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An Instructor's Role in the Task Board
As an instructor, your role in the Task board community is an important one. Student feedback from course surveys indicates that instructor presence in the discussion boards creates a positive overall impact for students. It is the instructor’s responsibility to not only monitor and maintain the task boards, but to also actively contribute to the conversation.
A Task Board where students are able to engage in lively discussions with fellow students and instructors allows students to strengthen their comprehension of course material. For this reason, the Task Board should be one that generates discussion and encourages students to actively participate.
Best Practice for Instructors and the Task/Discussion Board
Foster a Collaborative Community
Part of the instructor's role in the discussion forums is to foster a collaborative learning community. This means creating an engaging atmosphere where students are encouraged to interact with one another.
A successful Task Board is one that generates engaging discussion. Students can become disengaged and less motivated to participate in discussion, when they do not feel like anyone is reading their posts. As the instructor, you can create and further conversation by making comments on student posts and asking probing questions.
Set Clear Expectations
Task Board participation often counts for a portion of a student's final course marks. For this reason, it is important that students understand how their posts will be assessed. While it may be easier to track student participation based on the number of posts they contribute to the discussion boards, it is important to emphasize the importance of quality over quantity. When students are solely focused on the number of responses, conversations often end up less engaging and stagnant. Therefore, it is helpful to provide students with clear expectations as to how their posts will be graded. There are many ways you can keep track of the quality of student contributions.
A Few Ideas For Tracking Task Board Contributions . . .
Use an Excel Sheet for tracking each student post
Evaluate each student response based on a three-point scale (adequate, good, excellent)
Have students complete a self-assessment of their contributions
Have students complete a summary of the class discussion each week (or every few weeks) to be graded
Have students complete a discussion board portfolio of their best posts at the end of the course
An Important Note About Expectations for Replies to Others!
Task Boards are most useful when they create conversation! In order to create conversation, many courses require students to reply to their fellow student's discussion board posts. Some students may be unsure as to how to respond to their peers. It is beneficial to be clear with students as to the expectations for what those replies should look like (e.g. frequency and quality of replies). This ensures that the discussion board furthers relevant conversations rather than being filled with simple, superficial postings.
In the AQ office we are trying to move away from an obligation for students to post replies to a certain number of their peers, instead putting the emphasis on the quality of their initial task response.
Writing Effective Discussion Questions
Good discussion questions elicit a higher level of thinking from students. The quality of conversation in the Task Board is often directly tied to the quality of questions students have been asked to respond to. Therefore, it is important that all discussion questions/prompts are created with specific learning objectives in mind.
Further Learning!
The University of Oregon has compiled a great resource for instructors on generating effective discussions in an online learning environment. Please take some time to review the document below and save it for future reference!
32eJ6TRxygzuNwsE_kFG1jom64VqZCJd7-Generating and Facilitating Effective Online Discussions.pdfGoogle Sites
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