Today, I’m focusing on discussion boards. Way back in season 1, I covered this topic when Canvas was still a new thing in my district and teachers wanted to know how to effectively use the discussion boards feature. With our current online situation, discussion boards are so very relevant and should be one of your most commonly used tools. So I decided to bring the topic back and update it with some new ideas. In fact, I had so many ideas, it actually spread to two episodes! So today I’ll discuss how to develop questions, get into video discussions and talk about different platforms to use. Then in part two, I’ll jump into evaluating responses, using rubrics and grading. So let’s jump in!
Discussion boards can be at the same time both a shiny gem in a teacher’s tool bag and the bane of their existence. While discussion boards are versatile and can be used to engage students before, during, or after a face-to-face, virtual or hybrid class, no teacher wants to read 30 some odd responses that all sound similar and might be a sentence in length. You want to hear thoughtful individual opinions while also allowing for larger interactions between students. Online discussions also give students who don’t feel comfortable speaking up in a live classroom environment or a Zoom session, an opportunity to think through their answers and be more comfortable to “speak” up.
But the trick is to ask the right questions or rather, ask them in the right way, so you get a lot of discussion! You want to develop questions that will prompt and foster a dialogue.
To do that, discussions should allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of key concepts and build upon reflective practices, allowing them to connect with prior activities and the world around them. Discussions should play a role that ultimately help students remember, understand, apply, analyze, and evaluate content. But writing discussion board questions isn’t easy! In some educational circles, the thought is that it takes more time to prepare for online discussions than that of a lecture, as it requires an in-depth knowledge of the content and the ability to be able to address questions such as “what is the end goal for students?” and “how does it fit within developing or assessing student understanding of the topic?”
Eventually, you’ll get to a point where you can give students more opportunities for choice in their discussions and further engage students using higher order techniques. But for now, let’s start with asking students questions that will facilitate thoughtful and sustained discussions.
DEVELOPING QUESTIONS
First, your discussion questions should be open-ended as they encourage multiple viewpoints and can generate additional topics or jumping off points, such as “What struck you as the most successful/problematic parts of the Articles of Confederation?”
Next, allow students to explore areas and relate material to their lives, such as when reading The Catcher in the Rye, “Did any of you relate to Holden’s struggles?” or “Did this character remind you of anybody you know?”
Let’s explore some other question types that will encourage discussion among your students:
Don’t forget that you can use other materials in your discussion boards too. You could embed a passage from a text, embed an image, or use a lyric of a song or have students respond to an article or video.
If you’re using an LMS, such as Canvas for your discussion boards, look through the settings for different options that can help with managing the discussion. One popular option is having students reply to the question before they can see other student responses.
DISCUSSION BOARD PLATFORMS
But, what if you don’t have an LMS? There are other options out there.
Kialo Edu is a free platform for teaching the importance of reasoned, respectful arguments when trying to persuade others as students will choose sides, pro or con, and add their own opinions via “claims.” The stronger the argument as voted on by other users, the more prominence it has within the discussion area. As a teacher, you will want to create private discussion inviting only your classes as this platform also allows students to browse for and participate in existing discussions or create their own.
YoTeach! is another free platform that acts as a backchannel web app, where teachers create and moderate chat rooms for real-time interaction among students. Students enter the platform via a link, a QR code, or a numeric code and then can interact with everyone in their class by sharing text messages, replying to others’ posts, responding to polls, sharing and annotating pictures, and submitting drawings.
Eduflow focuses on scaffolded online discussions where participants can answer specific questions or be split into discussion groups. Teachers can also require that students post to the topic before commenting. This platform has a free plan with some limitations as teachers can only create 3 courses and have a total of 50 students in each course. Their lite plan is available for $19 a month.
Parlay is a platform that allows for both synchronous and asynchronous discussion and the ability to create a Socratic seminar like environment. Teachers can create their own topics, browse the “Parlay Universe”, or ask the Parlay team to create a custom discussion prompt for your class. Students then review any materials relating to the discussion and submit their response. You can provide personalized feedback to each student and receive data from the discussion to help you better understand how to improve discussions in the future. However, the price is a bit steep. While there’s a no time limit free trial, the features are limited. An individual teacher license costs $160 a year.
VIDEO DISCUSSIONS
Since season one of Tech Tuesday, other sites such as Flipgrid have become very popular as studies have shown that video discussions, “reduce students’ feelings of isolation and increase their social presence more than traditional text-based discussions”. All things, we need right now, right? They also create an opportunity for students to engage in more active learning where they can see and hear each other, thus increasing engagement with the content.
Not to mention this generation of learners are obsessed with video! According to survey results from Common Sense Media in October 2019, teens on average spend 7 hours and 22 minutes watching videos, which doesn’t include time spent using screens for school or homework. That’s crazy – it’s an entire school day!
But as I was saying, video discussions have other added benefits such as teaching technological skills for video and audio recording, editing, and publishing and just like the text format, videos are asynchronous and allow students to capture their thinking at any time, day or night. So if they can’t be present on a Zoom call, or need to respond later, they can still share their thinking.
If you’ve never participated in a video discussion before, essentially the teacher poses a question, either text based or on video themselves and then students record short videos in order to respond to a discussion topic and to each other. On Flipgrid, you can also give feedback via text or video. They also have a great discovery library, where users can share topics with the entire Flipgrid community as well as browse topics created by one of their education partners such as the BBC, Adobe, The Met and more.
With the newest update, you can either create a group, which is essentially your class to add topics into as you go, or just create a topic that is not tied to any group or class. To add a topic, click the blue “Add a Topic” button. Then add the Title, Prompt, Recording Time, and any additional media. Then set the access control, which determines how students will join the topic. I suggest using student emails if you have that ability in your district. There are a few more options that you can customize, but once finished click on the blue “Create Topic” button.
Voicethread, another video discussion tool has been around for awhile, actually longer than Flipgrid. You or students can upload, share and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files, videos; there’s actually over 50 different types of media that can be used on VoiceThread. Then allow for comments by using one of five options: microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio-file upload. Again, there is a price attached as individual teacher licenses are $79 per year or $15 per month.
Returning back to Canvas for a moment, while we tend to think of discussion boards as being only text-based, students can respond via video too. On any assignment or discussion board, students can record using the media tool, found in the toolbar of the rich content editor and then choosing to either upload a video made using other video creation tools or record a live response using either the mic for just audio or the webcam for video.
I don’t think most students would think to use this, so make sure when you’re posting your question that you make this an option for students and be specific in your directions, saying something like, “Respond to the question below using either text or the media tool and record your response.” You will probably want to walk students through how to use this feature or have them watch this video.
A quick note before I move on. I’ve suggested several different tools today, so before using any of these, please check with your school district to make sure they are approved sites. I know I’ve mentioned COPPA in past episodes and it’s a really big deal that sites we use with students fall under this privacy act. Also, if you have an LMS already, most likely your district will require you to use that instead of a different tool.
MODELING RESPONSES
It’s also a good idea to model for students what a good response looks like in both the text and video formats. No matter what time of the year you may choose to implement discussion boards, you will always want to show students what your expectations are and how you prefer they respond for your class.
First, do a practice question as a whole class. In a synchronous session, you can post your question in your LMS or to Flipgrid and discuss with students how they can respond, asking some to volunteer how they would form a response and don’t forget to include how students should respond to each other, especially if there will be varying opinions. Then have students post their replies to the practice question just as you talked about. You will want to do this a few times so students feel comfortable responding.
Another way you can model good responses is in the post itself, including a short example response or a bulleted list of what students should include in their answer.
All of the resources mentioned in today’s episode will be available in the episode notes on Wakelet. Thanks for joining me again this week for part one of using discussion boards. In my next episode, I’ll cover how to evaluate and grade responses.
How have you been using discussion boards? Do you use video discussions? Please share advice or ideas for others in the comments!
Ms Priester EDU 