February 24, 2006

E-Coaching Tip 5: The Role of Faculty in Discussion Boards

This e-coaching tip is the first of three tips focusing on the role of faculty and students in online courses. Be sure to take at least a quick look at the framework on the "Phases of Engagement" proposed by Conrad and Donaldson that is in the first question . According to this framework -- at this stage of your online course -- you probably want to be incorporating activities in which students are collaborating with each other and in which your role is shifting to doing more facilitation. You may already be well into this phase, if you are an experienced online instructor. Note also that one of the ways to engage students more deeply is to provide opportunities for students to assume roles of questioners, summarizers, and facilitators.

A suggested link -- not to be missed if you are interested in more ideas, etc on developing critical thinking is at <www.criticalthinking.org/resources/articles/helping-students-assess-their-thinking.shtml>

Next week's message will provide a few hints about Getting to Know Your Students Individually

We are already beginning the process of collecting additional questions that you might have for the summer courses.

****************************************

E-Coaching Tips

Success Tip 5: The Roles of Faculty and Learners in Online Learning Environment --Part One of Three: The Role of Faculty in Discussion Boards

1. As a faculty member, how involved should I be in the discussion boards, chats, etc.

Here are a couple of ideas that may be useful for you in deciding how involved you want to be in the online boards and discussions of your course. Some faculty find it helpful to think about how faculty and students communicate as a series of stages from more involved to less involved. This means that as a course progresses, the role of faculty and students change. The virtual presence of the faculty member is just as important in the later phases of a course as in the beginning. In the initial stages of a course, the focus of the faculty member is on core content focus and facilitating interaction so that a learning community develops. In the later stages of a course when it is likely that students have substantive content questions and insights, the role of the faculty member is to comment, clarify, support, and challenge students.

Here is one framework proposed by Conrad and Donaldson (2004) that defines four possible stages of faculty and learner roles throughout a course. You may want to think about where you are in these stages with your students. Another factor is the cohort factor. If a group stays together over a series of courses, the first phase may be unnecessary.

Notice that as learners becomes more active, the instructor moves from guiding all interaction to participating in activities as needed. As students assume more independent and collaborative roles and responsibilities, a faculty member can step back from being the leader of the learning community to being a co-community member.

2. Are there other principles that I can use to help me appropriately match my involvement to the different types of learning activities and stages of a course?

One basic principle is that the goal of communication in an online course is to balance the three dialogues among faculty-to-learner, learner-to-learner, and learner-to-resource dialogues. A campus-based classroom often has a high percentage of faculty-to-learner dialogue with the faculty at the center of many activities. In an online course, you want to balance the dialogues and move from a "transmission of knowledge" mode to a coaching and mentoring mode. Your role as a faculty is to coach and mentor your students as they build, reshape and extend their knowledge structures. When you are "talking," learners assume the role of listening, which is a less active role than for them to write and discuss; more learning occurs within learners' heads when they are actively processing, writing, analyzing and questioning.

One of my favorite stories is from an online faculty who was somewhat frustrated with what he perceived as sterile and almost pro forma postings on the discussion boards --until he had a family emergency that required him to be away for a few days. He told the students to continue the class discussions while he assumed a less visible, but still affirming and monitoring role during the week of the emergency. To his delight, the learning community atmosphere that he had been trying to achieve started to happen. The discussion postings took on a new vibrancy of intellectual inquiry and analysis. While you shouldn't look to have this happen in your class overnight, it is a goal to work towards. And always, the importance of a faculty's virtual presence and confirmation of content accuracy cannot be overstated.

3. How about a few simple guidelines?

Here are a few simple guidelines that you can use to refine your decisions as to when to be in the foreground and when to be in the background. If you have a favorite guideline or suggestion of your own, please send it on to us at ecoach@designingforlearning.info and we'll share with others.

• Provide some spaces in your course site for learners to talk to and help each other that are totally faculty-free. Think in terms of a social coffee-gathering place for your learners to freely comment, wonder, and ask for help.
• Be specific about what your role is for each of the discussion board activities.
• For example, if you have a "Getting Acquainted" Discussion Posting during Week One of a course, you might want to include that you will be reviewing these postings, but not commenting on them. You may want to encourage learners who post later in the week to share or note common interests and experiences. In this way, you are building in some natural grouping or processing of these postings.
• Later in the course, for a more concept-oriented discussion, it might be appropriate for small groups of two-five learners to review/grade each other's postings according to the rubrics that you have designed. Your role would be reviewing the reviews and summarizing and commenting on the evaluations completed by the learners. This is often a good time to plan to comment on the links, relationships, and applications as noted by the learners.
• Occasionally, you as the faculty can take the active role of a Socratic questioner for a more complex topic requiring analysis and problem solving. This would be a case where you would be more in the forefront, encouraging the learners to search within themselves for what they know and think. Recall from the FAQ section on questioning, that this means, asking questions such as, "What do you think is the main issue here?" and "How does this relate to other core concepts?" So you are in the foreground asking questions, but not proposing or suggesting the answers.
• Occasionally design activities where you are in the background and students take over the role of questioner, summarizer, and encourager, etc. For more background and ideas on using Socratic questioning, and for how you can delegate roles to learners, the resources on Socratic questions and questioning listed below -- the same from the earlier section -- are useful.

Resources:

Conrad, R. & Donaldson, J. A. (2004). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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