Whether we like them or not, online message boards are here to stay. Online discussion forums are increasingly being used in college courses, whether we’re teaching entirely online or incorporating it into a face-to-face session. What Are the Online Discussion Boards for Students like BlackhatWorld in 2023 ? drop Your Answer …
5 Tips for Improving Online Discussion Boards for Students like BlackhatWorld in 2023
Whether we like them or not, online message boards are here to stay. Online discussion forums are increasingly being used in college courses, whether we’re teaching entirely online or incorporating it into a face-to-face session.
I have been a university professor for more than 30 years, and for 15 of those years, I have chosen to teach online. I have utilized online discussion boards to supplement traditional lecture courses and as a foundation for graduate and undergraduate seminars. I have used online discussion boards in classrooms with as few as 6 students and as many as 130 students.
At a variety of institutions, including high schools, two-year universities, and liberal arts colleges, I’ve probably hosted close to 50,000 online discussion forums and I’ve witnessed hundreds of other professors’ online discussion boards.
1. Divide And Conquer On Online Discussion Boards
Many professors utilize only one Quorahub online discussion board for tens or even hundreds of students to react at once, despite the fact that few of us would ever contemplate hosting a face-to-face debate among 50, much less 100, students.
I recently watched a colleague instruct a 100-student in-person lecture course. The lecturer made a discussion board online available for students to use before each lecture so they could debate the assigned reading. However, when I looked at the online discussion board, I found that very few students—if any—were actually talking about the reading assignment. It was necessary of each student to make a remark or question, which they all did. However, none of the pupils were engaged in discussing, which is defined as “talking about (something) with another person or group of people.”
An online dropbox might be more useful than a discussion forum if the main educational objective is to make students accountable for a reading assignment. However, you must divide and conquer if the teaching objective is to promote discussion and involvement regarding what pupils read.
Any class with more than 12 pupils should be divided into groups of six to nine students each. For each group of six to nine pupils, establish a separate yet concurrent discussion board. In this way, a class of 90 students might feel like a class of nine due to the ease with which students can communicate with one another.
Divide students into groups, and the online learning management systems (such as Moodle, Instructure Canvas, and Blackboard) will automatically create a different discussion board for each group. Therefore, while breaking up huge classes into smaller pieces doesn’t increase the burden, it really increases engagement.
2. Direct Traffic Online Discussion Boards
The biggest flaw I observe in teachers’ usage of Quorahub internet discussion forums is that they aren’t sufficiently directed. Most teachers just publish a question and urge everyone to answer it. Pupils may be instructed by the professors to reply to other students.
Traffic management is necessary to run good discussion boards. Not only the what (the prompt), but also the who (to react to) and the when (it’s due) must be included.
Create two distinct assignments with two distinct dates, for example, to make the dual task of posting your own remark and responding to another student’s comment effective: The first assignment has a due date for each student’s initial post, and the second assignment has a date for each student’s answers to other students’ initial postings.
Make sure that the two assignments’ due dates are at least one day apart. Otherwise, until just before the first (and only) deadline, there is no assurance that there will be enough posts for other students to react to. High-achieving students find it difficult to publish their initial response early and then have to rush to complete it as soon as the deadline approaches other students to post.
Regarding who each pupil should answer to, you may be even more strict. I ask each student to reply to a student who has not yet received a response for some assignments. I expect each student to answer to the same student (or alternatively, a different student) who they responded to in their last assignment for subsequent tasks.
The idea is to guide discussion board traffic, much like one guides conversational flow during face-to-face conversations, rather of letting the students wander off in random directions. Other modifications can be made.
3. Assign Actions Online Discussion Boards
Instead of only instructing students to “Discuss the…,” or just asking them, “What did you think about…?,” hinge discussion board prompts on action verbs. The verbs Find, Explain, Describe, Identify, and Compare are among my favorites.
For discussion of articles or chapters, for instance, one of my favorite questions is, “Find three quotes that intrigued you and explain why.” Find three quotes that astonished you and explain why, for example, or “Find three quotes that irritated you and explain why,” to name a few of variations.
Students receive the impression that the Quorahub discussion board is a place where real work gets done rather than a place where everyone hangs around and chats by phrasing assignments in terms of activities, such as Find, Compare, Explain, Describe, Identify, and Compare.
Avoid prompts when there is just one right response since this leaves no room for further input from other pupils. Instead of utilizing an online discussion board, think about employing an online exam or an independently completed worksheet to measure retrieval of specific material.
That is not to argue that factual information cannot be questioned on internet discussion forums; nevertheless, the questions must be changed, which brings me to my next recommendation.
4. Incorporate Student Interactivity Online Discussion Boards
Rather than having all students respond to the same prompt in the same way, incorporate interactivity by requiring variation in students’ responses. For instance, use jigsaw prompts. Named after social psychologist Elliot Aronson’s jigsaw classroom, jigsaw prompts require each student to contribute information that hasn’t been previously discussed (e.g., Find a that no one else has found; Describe the way that no one else has described; Identify a that no one else has identified, and so fort h). Snowball prompts also incorporate interactivity and build in variety. With a snowball prompt, each student is required to build onto the information that a previous student provided. Jigsaw and snowball prompts have the added benefit of rewarding students who post early. You can also incorporate student interactivity by requiring that students respond to other students using the 3C + Q method. On my online discussion boards, I require that students’ responses to other students always include at least two of the following:.
5. Deter Students from Parachuting into Online Discussion Boards
When tasks are phrased in terms of activities, such as Find, Compare, Explain, Describe, Identify, and Compare, students receive the impression that the discussion board is a place where actual work is done rather than just idle chatter. Avoid asking questions that can only have one right answer since this leaves no room for further input from other pupils. Instead of utilizing an online discussion board, think about employing a self-completed worksheet or an online exam to measure the retrieval of specific knowledge. However, the questions must be diverse, which brings me to my second idea. Online discussion boards may still query accurate material.
By fully deleting the menu option for the discussion board from the course navigation, I further discourage students in my classes from jumping into the board. As an alternative, I include hyperlinks to each Discussion Board topic in my list of homework assignments (for example, “Read X, watch Z, and listen to Q, then go to the Unit 2: Assignment #3 Discussion Board and identify a…”).
Online discussion forums may thus be made more interesting and dynamic by making a few changes. They may be a strong foundation for online courses as well as a useful addition to traditional classroom settings. In fact, because it allows for asynchronous communication, many students find that online conversation is preferable to face-to-face debate. I’m hoping that these pointers will help a lot of teachers get better at if not their preference for, online discussion boards.
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