Online discussions are ideal places for engaging students with content, peers, and the instructor, but they can be onerous for students and faculty. While they offer the opportunity for deep social and cognitive engagement if students are prompted by thoughtful opening questions and effective follow-up questions and scaffolding techniques, they can be time intensive. We will consider various worst practices and then explore tools and techniques for remedying these practices and reducing the (often) cumbersome nature of online discussions. Then we will briefly review foundational work on cognitive and social engagement. Participants will work in small groups to apply tools learned and to develop a question set for their own classes (initial questions, follow-up, scaffolding). Finally, we will look at how we can follow Heidegger’s dictum to ‘let students learn’ while maintaining an online presence. Bring a course objective for discussion development.
I think that online discussions, done well, are the heart of any online course. However, I would love to learn about alternatives that maintain a sense of engagement and community while encouraging learning.
Wednesday April 13, 2016 4:00pm - 4:45pm EDT
Room V/W
