The success of effective discussion depends upon the involvement of students and instructor. In a collaborative classroom, instructor and students share in both the teaching and the learning. As students participate, they assume responsibility for furthering meaningful discussion. The instructor provides guidelines for each discussion by designing activities that include problem-solving, case studies, brainstorming, group activities, etc. The students bring to the discussion knowledge and opinions based experience, reading, research, and interactions with others. The instructor maintains responsibility for guiding discussions and keeping students on track, contributing insight and further knowledge, maintaining group harmony, and weaving the various discussion threads into a summary of points that correlate with the course content. (Jusri and Lim, 2003)
Online activities should ideally be self-contained – that is, all information and resources needed are available online. Instructions should be explicit and clear, with such elements as word limits, timeframe and assessment requirements clearly stated.
The SMART acronym may be useful for designing effective e-tivities for students:
Specific: Be really clear. Woolly or general purposes can result in unfocussed discussions.
Measurable: Know when goals have been achieved.
Achievable: Tasks must be achievable by the participants with your help
Relevant: Tasks must be relevant to the primary goals of your course.
Timely: Set deadlines within a reasonable timescale.
Berge (1995) has collated useful recommendations for online facilitators into four categories: pedagogical, social, managerial and technical. Some important pedagogical recommendations are:
Berge mentions ‘weaving’ – this is a technique where the facilitator reviews the messages, identifying those with similar threads and weaving them together to relate to key course ideas, thereby facilitating the shared learning experience, and keeping the discussion developing. ‘Summarising’ also draws together the important aspects of different responses in a way that promotes synthesis of the discussion content, where the purpose is to help the discussion wind up.
For more on weaving see Gilly Salmon’s Resources for practitioners (http://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/resources.shtml)
For more on facilitation, see:
True synchronous discussion is the kind of ‘chat’ that many students are familiar with from forums such as MSN or Yahoo messenger. In this case, the screen continuously updates as participants enter text, and the interaction is more like a conversation. In Vista, the Chat facility includes a whiteboard, for drawing and loading images and websites. Chat is not threaded, so adhering to conversation protocols, such as always identifying the thread you are responding to, becomes important.
As its name implies, an exchange in a chat room can be less substantial than that in an online discussion area. In fact, for educational purposes a chat room provides few of the benefits of online communication. Because the conversation takes place in real time there is little time to craft a response. However, chat is an excellent tool for building community online. This can be particularly important in distance education, where students cannot speak face-to-face because much (or all) of the course is online.
Synchronous discussion can be useful:
Particular protocols apply when communicating online. While some of your students may be familiar with these, some will not be. In any case, it is important for you to model best practice. Probably the most important thing to remember is that online the tone and meaning of anything written is not moderated by facial expression or body language. Participants need to be very clear, mannerly and to communicate warmth through language. Conventions have arisen that assist online communication, such as acronyms (ROTFL = roll on the floor laughing) and emoticons (;-) = wink). While moderate use of these may be useful, heavy use is likely to alienate the non-initiated.
The following suggestions have been adapted from Arlene H. Rinaldi’s “The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette” (http://www.rdc.com.au/Netiquette.html).
Here are some other useful links to information on netiquette, emoticons and acronyms: