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8 Ways to Get Students Engaged in Online Discussion

Dr. William Klemm suggests eight guidelines to create a strong collaborative learning environment in your course discussion boards. These methods are designed to increase both the quality and quantity of student participation.

1. Require Participation

   Don’t let it be optional. Set aside a portion of the grade allocation for quantity and quality of participation in the online discussion.

2. Form Learning Teams

   Collaborative learning can occur just as well in the online environment. Asynchronous conferencing via discussion boards overcomes the schedule coordination issues that often plague face-to-face teams.

3. Make the Activity Interesting

   Make it relevant so that students will want to participate. Challenge students to apply what they are learning.
   

4. Don’t Settle for Opinions

   Encourage rigorous analysis and creative thought. Instructors should insist that opinions must be supported with data or evidence.
   

5. Structure the Activity

   Organize topics around course objectives. Structure provides guideposts to help students think of things to contribute.
   

6. Require a Hand-In Assignment (Deliverable)

   Deliverables could include idea generation and analysis, decisions, plans and designs, proposals, case studies, problem generation and solution, research projects, term papers or reports.
   

7. Know What You are Looking for and Involve Yourself to Help Make It Happen

   Participate in the discussion. When you offer feedback, encouragement, and direction, students will become more involved.
   

8. Implement Peer Review and Grading

   This can be a great way to encourage quality work. Be sure to provide students with appropriate evaluation criteria.

From Fall 2003 ITC Topics

How to Engage Remote Students

Interaction with course content and other students need not necessarily be synchronous. There are a variety of technologies that will support individual and group work regardless of the physical location of the students. Web sites, discussion boards, email and chat rooms all facilitate instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction. Using these communications technologies in conjunction with active learning principles can significantly increase student engagement with the course content and the learning community.

Create teams of three to eight students. Each team is responsible for researching and reporting on one aspect, or 'theme,' of the topic under consideration. These teams may be of short or long duration, from a single class session to an entire semester, depending on the complexity of the topic and the instructional objectives of the teacher. Regardless of the team composition or the duration of the team project, it is critically important that each member of the team fully understands the requirements of the assignment and the expectations for their participation in the group processes and products.

From Fall 2004 ITC Topics

New Journaling, Blogging, and Collaborative Tools for Blackboard

The Digital Native has been characterized as highly social and accustomed to networked, collaborative environments. Online@UT (Blackboard) offers some built-in tools to help create that environment. Now, in addition to Online@UT's existing Discussion Forum and Virtual Classroom, new building blocks provide additional opportunities for students to collaborate, to share, and to reflect on their learning. The Campus Pack from Learning Objects Inc. contains three building blocks now available in Online@UT that allow students new ways to interact with each other in a collaborative, password-protected, online learning environment.

Teams LX creates a collaborative Web space within an Online@UT course that permits a group of students to work together to create and manage information within a protected space. This virtual space allows upload of many types of documents and live, online editing of those documents. A group of students could readily create a mini-Web site with graphics and live links to external sites, as well as internal, non-linear navigation. This kind of creation space was not available in Blackboard before this building block.

Journal LX allows students to participate in blogging (Weblogging), an ongoing sharing and documentation of one's ideas. This journaling tool provides blog-space for students to create knowledge, engage with content, and analyze their own work and the work of others in a non-threatening environment. This tool can increase a student's reflections and allow the student to become a better evaluator of Internet information. Instructors can see the student's cognitive development unfolding.

Journals can be used within a course site in three ways:

• Group journal area to work on a project in such a way that the instructor can view individual contributions

• Individual student journal area in which to write and formulate ideas or express opinions

• Course journal area where instructor and students can discuss issues

Backpack LX creates a space where students can assemble a series of Web pages that demonstrate discipline-specific knowledge, career-focused goals, or personal interests. They can then share their projects with students outside of their own courses but within the UT academic community. This building block provides the opportunity to showcase class projects, demonstrate knowledge construction, and publish a reflective journal.

From Fall 2005 ITC Topics

Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries

Last year Dr. Matt Gray observed some specific student behaviors in his cohort-based Wildlife Habitat Evaluation and Management course that concerned him. Students had demonstrated a tendency to procrastinate on writing their group reports, and the workload for team projects was occasionally distributed unevenly, with a single student or two performing the majority of the work. Given that as part of the ITC's Wireless Instructional Initiatives (WII) 2005 project this year's students would also have access to wireless laptops and Trimble GeoXM handheld units (combination GPS receiver, GIS unit, and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) devices), Dr. Gray met with the WII team this past summer to brainstorm appropriate instructional strategies to address these student behaviors and make use of their new technology.

The team believed that student procrastination could be deterred by providing a series of smaller deliverables with regular deadlines and by having them utilize journaling to document their weekly progress. Such journaling would also assist in making individual contributions more apparent and discernible, thereby helping to identify lopsided effort by team members. Dr. Gray also adjusted the course grading rubric to incorporate these changes to provide sufficient motivation for students.

Although he had previously developed standalone course websites, Dr. Gray was also interested in the potential of some of the new and existing features of Online@UT's Blackboard software to "facilitate learning, information transfer, and grading," especially given the team-based nature of his course. ITC staff worked with him to explore and utilize relevant Online@UT features for collaboration among teams for data analysis, reports, and presentations, while simultaneously addressing his other course goals and realizing administrative efficiencies.

Ultimately he opted to have his students use the system to, among other things:

• Document the progress being made on developing their group management plans by using the new Journal LX tool.

• Post sections of their management plans online, via the new Teams LX tool, to be reviewed and edited by other team members, the teaching assistant, and instructor.

• Submit anonymous questions to a message board so the instructor could respond via a threaded discussion.

From Leveraging Technology for Course Transformation – 2005 Spotlight on Matt Gray, Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries

Business and Professional Communication

Dr. Linda Sennett uses Online@UT to enable group-work so that students can get a taste of the group dynamics they are likely to experience in today's business world. At the beginning of each semester, she asks students to complete various survey instruments and exercises, such as the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Dr. Sennett then works to assign students to "balanced, whole-brain teams" based on criteria including their profile results, their majors, how far along they are in school, and other personal observations. Many assignments, including the final exam, involve working in those teams. She has found that team test taking improves student retention of material, because when team members disagree, they are forced to articulate, research, and defend their positions, knowing that everyone's grade on the team exam will be impacted.

From Improving Communication Using Technology – 2004 Spotlight on Linda Sennett, Communication Studies

Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management

Creating groups or teams inside a (Online@UT) course site to work on group projects provides Dr. Laura Jolly with a major development tool to move students forward. Within a class of 85 students, she creates eight groups, two for each of the following areas: Retail industry, Restaurant industry, Hotel industry, and Recreation/tourism industry.

The project requires two types of postings: a company summary, two-pages in length, and a PowerPoint presentation which requires them to persuade an audience to engage with their company. Before the advent of the course management systems, students would photocopy each two-page report, creating enough copies for everyone in the class. Stacks of company reports were then distributed, requiring massive paper use. File exchange and the digital drop box feature have made sharing of information more effective and efficient. This method also mirrors the kind of collaborative team work they will be engaged in after graduation.

From Preparing Students for Professional Success – 2003 Spotlight on Laura Jolly, Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management

Mental Health Counseling

By integrating technology into mental health counseling Dr. William Conwill finds that he is able to facilitate collaborative work for students. Assigning students to work in groups toward a final presentation allows them to experience the challenges of collaborative work and at the same time, gives them rich material to examine how their personalities are impacting the group dynamics. The focus of the course is indeed Personality and Mental Health. Dr. Conwill is also able to reach the quieter students in a new way. Using both private e-mail between himself and his students, as well as the class e-mail function within CourseInfo (Blackboard) allows him to create sharing opportunities that work for both extrovert and introvert. One student's comment came to his mind, "This is the first course I have ever taken where you learn about the other people in the course." Sometimes the technology can enhance in ways you had not predicted.

From Extending Vision with the New Tools of Technology - 2001 Spotlight on William Conwill, Educational Psychology & Counseling

Human Services

One of the goals of the Thinking About People course is to help students understand how the human development and human service practice relates to their own personal lives. With the use of an internet forum this semester, students have been able to share with each other their own experiences as they relate to particular life stages (such as infancy, early childhood, adolescence). One such question the students addressed during the study of early adulthood was: "Choose an issue such as abortion, capital punishment or other social issues. Define your position as you think about the issue today. How did you think about it when you were 17? What are the differences in your thinking process?" Students not only had the opportunity to exchange responses with their classmates, but they replied to at least two of their classmates. Many of the dialogues that began through the internet have continued within the class setting.

From Thinking About People in Online Learning - 1999 Spotlight on Marianne Woodside, Educational Psychology & Counseling