October 27, 2006

E-Coaching Tip 26: Preparing Discussion Posts that Invite Reflection and Response

Last week's tip focused on Discussion Wraps -- different ways of integrating and summarizing the content generated by students in a weekly discussion. Another key question has to do with creating a great post to launch the discussion! So, the question might be, "How do you create a discussion post or discussion catalyst that students can't wait to contribute to?" Well, we may be a bit over the top here, but that is a great goal!

We haven't explored the different types of purposes that you may have for your learners for your class discussions. Discussions might be designed for one of the following purposes (Painter, et al., 2003; and Goodyear et al 2003, cited in Grogan, 2005):

• Encourage critical or creative thinking
• Reinforcing domain or procedural processes
• Provide an open question and answer forum
• Achieve social interaction and community building-- have the students get to know each other personally and intellectually
• Validating experiences
• Supporting students in their own reflections and inquiries

When designing discussions it is helpful to first determine your learning goal or objective for the discussion and then decide what type of question, activity or contribution from the students will best achieve that goal.

Here are a few hints for discussion postings culled from many conversations with experienced online faculty. Following these guidelines will probably increase the probability of success. Nothing is certain, however!

Create open-ended questions that learners can explore and apply the concepts that they are learning

This is a good guideline when your purpose is to encourage critical or creative thinking or to encourage students to reflect on their current knowledge, their current mental models. Open-ended questions invite exploration, analysis, reflection and research by students. Open-ended questions begin with phrases such as "Find another example of (Concept) in your personal experiences." Or, "If a natural disaster such as (name your disaster) happened in your (city, state, county, etc.) what organizations or leader would rise to lead a recovery response?" Or you may want to post questions that invite the students to research their own company, state, or region or to find or identify additional experts and resources in a particular niche.

Other good phrases for open-ended questions probe learners' existing mental models. Here are a couple of example questions. "What do you think of one of these national initiatives and why?" "Describe why you think what you do and provide support for your thinking."

You may also want to focus student on the course readings and ask for them to identify a common question that begs for enforcement or have them identify confusing or complex ideas in the readings. And ask their fellow students how they interpreted the information, etc. The purposes of these types of questions is to probe what students do know or understand from the content and what they may only think they know. It is a way of finding out how well-formed and useful their new concepts are!

Provide choices and options for students

Providing choices for students in questioning follows the principle of providing options for personalized and customized learning for students and a way of validating and affirming knowledge and skills. Working professionals are often grappling with many issues -- providing choices and options makes it possible to link the learning more directly with their work experiences and needs. One of the things I enjoy most in life are those occasions when two problems hold the seed of solution in the other. A good example of this is the need to support faculty in instructional design support. Most institutions do not have sufficient full time staff to support faculty in this way. When I was at Penn State and also Florida State we would have to contact faculty and tell them that their project proposal did not make the cut. After a few such disappointing meetings, we were able to make arrangements with the faculty teaching instructional design and create two-student teams to support faculty. These teams were then monitored by the faculty member. Students got hands-on practice with real projects and real clients; and faculty received support!

The learners in online classes provide many built-in opportunities to apply concepts in real life. Structuring questions that elicit students to examine and reflect on real problems helps students to manage their time and to interpret learning tasks in light of their own needs.

How many choices? Often a choice of three questions works well. If you ask other students to respond, then they can also have a choice of which items to respond to.

Why don't students respond on the board or to each other?

Why don't students make significant contributions and reflections to discussion board activities? One common reason is that learners are busy and leave it to the last minute. If you have a question that will take time to develop be sure that students know this in advance and can plan for it, and provide them with reminders and idea-starters, if appropriate.

We also know that students will ONLY respond if participation is part of the grading and assessment plan. They also are more regular and dedicated to participation if you -- the faculty member --are "present" in the class.

Other Quick One-Liner Hints

• If you want students to focus on individual exploration and contributions, then response to and by peers can be optional.
• Encourage the sense of community -- provide informal ways of getting to know each other. Encourage other student-to-student conversation --either on the discussion board or in the Open Forum.
• Model good Socratic-type probing and follow-up questions. Why do you think that? What is your reasoning? Is there an alternative strategy?
• Stagger due dates of the responses and consider mid-point summary and /or encouraging comments
• Provide guidelines and instruction on responding to other students. For example, suggest a two-part response: (1) what you liked or agreed with or what resonated with you, and (2) a follow-up question such as what you are wondering about or curious about, etc.
• Ask students to contribute to the course resource base. Find a valuable resource, comment on it and why it is useful now or potentially useful.
• Don't post questions soliciting basic facts, or questions for which there is an obvious yes/no response." The reason for this is obvious. Once one student responds, there is not much more to say! Very specific fact-based questions that you want to be sure that you students know are best used in practice quizzes.
• Log in to your course at least 4 times a week -- answer email, monitor discussions, post reminders, and hold online office hours.

References

Revised November 8, 2008
Copyright Judith V. Boettcher, 1997-2008