As described above, organic discussions allow for classroom style conversations while also allowing for deeper reflection and construction of knowledge the development of a Community of Inquiry. Organic discussions, in which the instructor starts 1-3 (or even 4 or 5) threads, turn the discussions into a collaborative process with students constructing knowledge together. Students learn from each other and the instructor as they engage in a give-and-take conversation that provides the opportunity to explore various topics from different points of view. The advantages of organic discussions are:

• They are more like classroom discussions in which each student responds to what previous students have said, thus avoiding the repetitive nature of post-and-reply-to-two homework-style discussions.

• They are more engaging to students because they are participating in a conversation instead of submitting a homework assignment.

• They provide time-savings for the instructor because the instructor can respond to groups of students and can continue to use canned responses, such as teaching stories and scaffolding questions, from term to term.

• They provide more flexibility: Except for the introductory discussions, most of the discussion variants described below work better when used restructured as organic discussions.

However, because the structure is probably new to your students, you will need to remind your students about the goals of online discussions and the structure multiple times during the beginning of the class. Here is a handout with helpful hints that you and your students might find useful. It is always best to participate more frequently (with reminders and guidance) in the first few online discussions. Instructors find that participating more heavily and providing more feedback in the first few discussions provide higher quality participation throughout the term. Implementation of restructured discussions is described in these handouts: Handout: Helpful Materials for Organic Discussion Implementation

It is helpful to start the term off with introductory discussions and to have the instructor respond to each introduction. Instructors are encouraged to use icebreakers, 1-minute videos introductions, introductions that include one fear regarding the course and one thing that they are excited about learning, the 5-Finger introduction described by Acolatse (2016), or one of the many other introduction types that can easily be found online. It is important to start out building relationships with your students right from the beginning of the class.

Problem-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, Case-Based Learning, and their variants are similar enough for our purposes to be treated under one type of online discussion. As described above in the Knowledge Construction section, students benefit from ill-defined, real-world problems (cases, or scenarios) that provide students with an opportunity to use the information that they’ve learned, connect it with previous information that they’ve learned, and apply higher-order critical thinking skills. It can be useful to add in new facts as the case develops, as often happens in the real world. You can start threads for each step (defining the problem, brainstorming solutions) or let them determine the order. Modeling effective practices can be helpful in the beginning of the term.

Check out this tool for designing PBL projects.

Acolatse (2016) and Reese-Durham (2014) provide helpful hints on having students facilitate online discussions after the instructor has modeled effective facilitation for one or two non-introductory discussions. Student facilitation is effective for upper-level undergraduate classes and graduate classes. However, if this is used, the instructor needs to post announcements more often and to have multiple check-ins with the facilitating group of students to let all students know that the instructor is still in the online discussion, even if he or she is not making any posts.

As mentioned above, Shukor et al., 2014, found that when students argue they construct knowledge at a higher level. Restructured online discussions make debates easier to implement for both the pre-debate and debate periods. The instructor can start two threads at the beginning of the discussion period (pre-debate work) and each team can reply to their respective thread and develop their arguments. Or, the class can be split into groups and each group participates in a pre-debate thread to hone their arguments. For the debate, each team’s representative replies to the other team’s post in a pre-determined order. Students can be asked to turn in an assignment about their experience of the debate and how their views may or may not have changed from the process. Alternatively, students can be asked to turn in arguments before the debate begins to support accountability. There are many variations on how this can be accomplished.

Restructured online discussions are the natural form that most discussions take when students use them to complete group projects. Group projects are described elsewhere in this module.

While we think of online discussions as text-based, there are a variety of tools that can be used with D2L Brightspace so that students and the instructor can leave audio or visual messages. Voice Thread is a tool that can be easily integrated into D2L and some institutions in Georgia already have access to it. Ask your local administrator if this tool is available for you. It is great for foreign language and speech classes.

Acolatse (2016) describes a number of techniques to help students become more engaged in traditional online discussions. The MANIC technique asks students to share 5 things from the assigned reading:

• Most Important Thing

• Something You Agreed With

• Something You Do Not Agree With

• Something Interesting

• Something Confusing

Check out the short Acolatse article for other great tips.

Kalelioğlu & Gülbahar (2014) found that it can also be helpful to assign students to roles in the online discussions for problem-based learning. Roles such as Six Thinking Hats, Socratic Seminar, Brainstorming, and Any One Here an Expert work. Once students have each played each of the roles, students will increase their critical thinking skills when they are allowed to use any of the various roles to solve problems or explore a case study.

Many classroom active learning techniques, such as the one-minute paper and Think-Pair-Share, as well as group projects, can be implemented in small group online discussions. Use the Groups tools in D2L Brightspace to divide students into groups.

Memo discussions help students negotiate meaning as they draft a response on a targeted goal (drafting the memo) that simulates a workplace tasks.

The class is divided into small groups of 4 or 5 people for the term (these are 8-week, online classes). For each discussion period, the instructor give each small group (about 5 students) a question prompt related to the assigned reading. Each group must draft a memo to respond to it. A different team member functions as lead writer for the memo each week, and the grade they get is worth a few more points than for the other group members. This avoids domination by a single group member. Students are graded not only on the final project, but by the group process and the negotiation of meaning within their discussion group. The instructor shares final memos with the class in a whole class discussion for further discussion. See this handout for more details and grading support.

Some instructors and students may want a break from the online discussion tool and may find that blogs serve a similar purpose, especially when the instructor is looking for more reflective posts.