DISCUSSIONS INTRODUCTION
The discussion
tool allows for asynchronous chat to occur. This means that you and your students do not have to be online at the same time to discuss a topic. As the instructor, I could post a discussion message and my students could post their thoughts throughout the week. Online discussions allow for all of your students to participate in a less risky environment. Often your shy students who you rarely hear voice an opinion or thought will thrive in an online discussion. While you still know who is posting the statements, you do not have to take the risk of getting an immediate negative response from your classmates.
Online discussions are the most successful when you pose a question that requires your students to pick a side and defend that side. These types of questions will get the most interaction from your students. For example the same topic could have a question posed in both of these manners.
Question 1:
What are your thoughts on TX giving a $2000 pay raise to its teachers?
Question 2:
You have been asked to defend or oppose the proposal for increased teacher salaries. Choose which side you will be on and list at least three reasons to defend your side.
With question 1 you could get responses as small as, "It is good that teachers got a raise.". That posting would not help you see that the student had learned anything. However, with the 2nd question, the student would have to spend some time thinking about their response and what the advantages and disadvantages for a teacher raise would be. Then they could have more discussion with each other talking about the points that each student had made.
If you are going to require that your students post an initial message and then respond to other students you may want to set up guidelines for that. For example if you were going to give them one week to discuss teacher raises. You might say that they had:
Sunday - Tuesday = initial posting
Wednesday - Saturday = 3 responses to other students
Allowing time for everyone to post before responding is important. Otherwise a late poster will not get many responses to their posting and early posters will not have anything to respond to.
