Discussion Boards Online Courses

[HigherEd7]

I was wondering if anyone has a link or information on developing a rubric for discussion questions? The one that I am using asked for to much detail in the response and its very time consuming to grade. Also, I was wondering if it is a good idea to have a weekly discussion question?

[spork]

From http://activelearningps.com/2015/06/21/grading-discussion-in-online-courses/:

http://activelearningps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/rubric-for-online-discussions.pdf

[HigherEd7]

Awesome and thank you

[ciao_yall]

I was wondering if anyone has a link or information on developing a rubric for discussion questions? The one that I am using asked for to much detail in the response and its very time consuming to grade. Also, I was wondering if it is a good idea to have a weekly discussion question?

You mean answering them? I always had students do reflections according to Kolb's theory of experiential learning.

1) Explain their contribution, such as a real-life example, a different theory, whatever.
2) How does it related to the reading, theory, under discussion?
3) Evaluate how it fits - well? Are there differences?
4) Now that you know this, how will you apply this to your... final project, life, whatever?

[HigherEd7]

Interesting and this is new to me. Do you have any information you can pass on? Would you do a reflective journal and discussion question?

I was wondering if anyone has a link or information on developing a rubric for discussion questions? The one that I am using asked for to much detail in the response and its very time consuming to grade. Also, I was wondering if it is a good idea to have a weekly discussion question?

You mean answering them? I always had students do reflections according to Kolb's theory of experiential learning.

1) Explain their contribution, such as a real-life example, a different theory, whatever.
2) How does it related to the reading, theory, under discussion?
3) Evaluate how it fits - well? Are there differences?
4) Now that you know this, how will you apply this to your... final project, life, whatever?

[larryc]

For the first time in 15+ years of online teaching, I am making discussion boards optional. I am not at all sure that I am doing the right thing. But in these 100-level courses, the discussion were nearly always terrible. Students write for the professor while making a nod at "discussing" the topic with another random student. They post the kind of trite bullshit that you get when in a regular class you call on any fratboy B student who did not do the reading.

I am sure I am doing it wrong and some of you have vibrant discussion boards in your online survey classes, but me I am giving up. For now anyway.

[spork]

^I do not use online discussions for undergraduate courses, only graduate courses that are fully online anyway, for this reason.

[downer]

Isn't it a bit much to expect that undergraduates could post strong analysis and commentary on readings that they have just done? Obviously some can, but most can't. I see the aim of discussion boards as being to get them to put their understanding in their own words and practice with the vocabulary that they are given. It will inevitably be basic. But I see it as a useful step to get them to the next stage. Very few of them will be able to leap straight to brilliant discussion in papers or even to answer exam questions about the material in an exam unless they have some practice writing about it beforehand. Or at least that's been my assumption.

If you don't have discussion boards, then do you replace that with something else, or do you just assign readings and then test the students on them?

[polly_mer]

For those who don't do discussion boards, what do you do to meet the requirements of "attendance" for online courses?  When I was director of online education at Super Dinky, the federal financial aid guidelines indicated that merely logging in did not count as attendance; students had to have regular and substantive contact with the group or else students were in a correspondence course and that's a different category for federal financial aid.  The new ruling this year doesn't seem to have eliminated that requirement: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/04/09/federal-rules-student-teacher-interaction-accreditation

For those who haven't spent years watching the debate, IHE has a readable overview of the issues at https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/08/08/new-debate-regular-and-substantive-interaction-between

For the first time in 15+ years of online teaching, I am making discussion boards optional. I am not at all sure that I am doing the right thing. But in these 100-level courses, the discussion were nearly always terrible. Students write for the professor while making a nod at "discussing" the topic with another random student. They post the kind of trite bullshit that you get when in a regular class you call on any fratboy B student who did not do the reading.

I am sure I am doing it wrong and some of you have vibrant discussion boards in your online survey classes, but me I am giving up. For now anyway.

When I was director of online education and spot checking our online courses, I never saw a discussion board that had great discussion.  I saw discussion boards that were better than terrible, but the faculty member was carrying a lot of the load--just like in other gen ed classes where few students were engaged enough to do the reading and had enough background to make a useful contribution.

I've taken online training with cohorts that had good discussion because we were practitioners in the field who had a variety of experience and lots of questions for each other as well as the professor.  Likewise, project teams where we were engaged in a joint endeavor usually have productive discussion.

I've looked over various people's shoulders as they wrapped up a post for the graduate course they were taking and seen great discussion.

But, as downer wrote, undergrads in intro classes at non-elite institutions tend to not have the abilities necessary to do good discussion.

[HigherEd7]

Great post. I agree with exactly what you are saying some students do a great job and others repeat what they have read from their classmates or copy from the textbooks. So if we are not going to use discussion questions for an online course what other tools could we use to replace this?

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for this information. Is this your rubric? If so can I have permission to use this?

From http://activelearningps.com/2015/06/21/grading-discussion-in-online-courses/:

http://activelearningps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/rubric-for-online-discussions.pdf

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for this information. Is this your rubric? If so can I have permission to use this?

From http://activelearningps.com/2015/06/21/grading-discussion-in-online-courses/:

http://activelearningps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/rubric-for-online-discussions.pdf

[spork]

Thank you for this information. Is this your rubric? If so can I have permission to use this?

From http://activelearningps.com/2015/06/21/grading-discussion-in-online-courses/:

http://activelearningps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/rubric-for-online-discussions.pdf

It's a blog for people to share ideas about teaching, so all the materials are effectively in the public domain.

[Aster]

This is an interesting discussion, and mirrors recent conversations that online faculty at Big Urban College have been increasingly making.

We're having a lot of complaints about student discussion boards also. Some faculty don't want to mess with them, for the reasons listed by other posters.

But there's the complication that Polly described, where online discussion boards are being appropriated as "attendance checkers" for financial aid compliance.

It's starting to upset a lot of fully online professors, because there are rumbles that our academic leadership will start micromanaging demands on online course assessment.

[ciao_yall]

Interesting and this is new to me. Do you have any information you can pass on? Would you do a reflective journal and discussion question?

I was wondering if anyone has a link or information on developing a rubric for discussion questions? The one that I am using asked for to much detail in the response and its very time consuming to grade. Also, I was wondering if it is a good idea to have a weekly discussion question?

You mean answering them? I always had students do reflections according to Kolb's theory of experiential learning.

1) Explain their contribution, such as a real-life example, a different theory, whatever.
2) How does it related to the reading, theory, under discussion?
3) Evaluate how it fits - well? Are there differences?
4) Now that you know this, how will you apply this to your... final project, life, whatever?

The context was that each week they had to submit a real-life example from something from the reading. It had to be done before class and we would discuss it during class. I would also have prompts if they didn't know where to start.

This was to make sure they had done the reading, instead of a quiz, and were prepared ahead of class to discuss the material and engage.

When teaching online, they would have to post these to the discussion board and then have 3 substantive comments to others' posts. "Substantive" meant...

1) Relate your fellow student's example to your post, comparing and contrasting your experiences.
2) Relate your fellow student's example to a different theory.
3) Relate your fellow student's theory to a different example.
4) Expand on your fellow student's discussion

Worked pretty well. Students figured out they got a lot of attention if they posted earlier in the week instead of waiting until the last minute, which they enjoyed.

The hard part was international and remedial students who wrote poorly and didn't get much love as a result.