Skip to main content

Engaging Students in Online Discussions

Many instructors express concerns to me about the lack of face-to-face communication in online classrooms. I think we can all agree this is a factor to be dealt with (however balanced by the flexibility of the medium), but there are some advantages to online communication. Students are actively expressing their thoughts and ideas in a public realm (at least among their peers) and the option of sinking to the back of the class and fading into anonymity is removed. Far from the criticism that texting has created a "dumbed down" student population, there are signs that we may be on the verge of a "literacy revolution" (source) and our incoming students are leading the charge. Persistent writing (posts which can be reviewed over time and do not disappear) for public audiences may encourage students to write with a higher degree of clarity and a more thoughtful approach (for more information, see the Stanford Study of Writing project).

The new balance
Early research indicated a tendency of male students to dominate discussions in F2F classrooms, and that female students are more vulnerable to interruption (source). This may mean there is the potential for more equity in online discussions for female students if they can express entire thoughts within a post and feel heard (source), however there are still gender-based differences in online communications, particularly involving writing preference, writing style (source). There are some indications that the online environment also provides more equity for stuents of ethnic minority status (source).

Your students have prior experience
Most students have engaged with others online in discussions for many years. They post comments in Facebook, IM their friends on Google or Facebook, wink and chat on dating sites, pontificate in community-oriented message boards, post reviews on products they've used, and complained on corporate feedback sites. If you think this describes the younger generation, you may be surprised to learn the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55 (source)!

The goal is not to simply get them talking; they already know how to do that. The goal is to get them

  • discussing
  • thinking, considering, reconsidering
  • analyzing
  • debating with respect
  • listening
  • responding
  • citing sources

We need to teach our students how to be informed and responsible online citizens, especially in online discussions. And chances are, some may already be doing it better than their instructors...

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to welcome students to a class

If you're a Cal Poly professor, I have a gift for you. In the dashboard, you'll find the online workshop called "Launching a Course Online with Canvas" that has a template for welcoming students to an online course. The letter was written for "normal" times, and should be sent out approximately a week prior to the start of class, with a reminder sent out again the day before class starts. For the most part, it works well in our unusual circumstances. I want to share with you what I'm telling my students, and I'll include it below. This is a work in progress, but it will go out to them a full week prior to the start of class (by Tuesday, March 31.) I want them to have the gift of TIME: to look around the online class (I will open it up on Sunday, April 4th) to ask me questions via email if they have any to put important items on their calendar, like purchasing the code for our simulation software to absorb what they will be completing in the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Teaching in the age of Covid-19

I'm overwhelmed. I've been teaching online for 20 years, but the past three weeks of my life have been incredibly complex. Working from home is not a big deal for me - at my last job, I often worked from home and established work "zones" and a daily routine that helped me focus on what needed to be done, but this is different. This time, I've spent the past three weeks setting up and delivering workshops for faculty, answering numerous questions, calming a lot of jittery friends who are not sure how this is going to work, and - I kid you not - I was berated for posting a helpful comment on behalf of my own lengthy experience to a group of faculty. In times like these, you find out who people truly are. But here I am, staring at my computer screen with content that is mine, that I am familiar with, and there is nobody but myself urging me on. I am tired. I feel demoralized from events that took place in the days prior to sheltering at home. And I need a break...
Post a Comment
Read more

Putting the toothpaste back into the tube

We've been asked to teach a 10 week course in 9 weeks. For me, this should be a piece of cake - each summer, I condense a 9 week short course from Cuesta College into a 6 week short course for summer session. I have done this for nearly 10 summers, so one would think a week's worth of snipping would be simple. I spent a frustrating day alternating between my course content and various shiny distractions. It could well be that I need a break - certainly I'm feeling that lack of  focus that comes from stress - but it's also that I'm making incremental changes from one week to the next. This is not hard work like chopping firewood, but hard work like lining up dominoes and finding a gap halfway through that needs to be addressed by nudging every piece by exactly 1/4". It is tedious. Creating an online course is usually completed over three terms; one to create the online shell while teaching the course in person, one to launch the course online, and one to fix...
Post a Comment
Read more