Routine Tasks
Opening tasks:
- Provide a welcome e-mail to students and provide contact information.
- Disseminate and collect a technology skills survey.
- Identify the technology instruction needs for the students.
- Post screen-casts to help students navigate the beginning of the class.
Daily tasks:
- Read posts from discussion board. Make necessary comments.
- Check social forum for appropriateness of comments.
- Send a private e-mail to one or two students each day.
Weekly tasks:
- Update “wall” for parents.
- Grade assignments and post comments along with grades.
- Call two parents per week to check in.
- Maintain regular “office hours” for phone calls.
Discussion Board Strategies:
Ice-breaker Activity: To begin the class, create an ice-breaker activity that will help the students get to know each other and become familiar with the use of a discussion board. Multiple ideas can be found here: http://virtual-icebreakers.wikispaces.com/home
This activity is a good one for elementary school students:
Famous Quotes and a Picture:
In a discussion forum, Google Doc, or Edmodo, create a location where the students can post their quotes and images. Ask students to post one quote and one picture that represents them. After all the students have posted their information, students should be instructed to comment on the postings of three other students, mentioning things they have in common. For the safety of the students, the sites from which students can choose their quotes or images ought to be selected and limited. Alternatively, the teacher could create a folder with a selection of images and quotes. This might be especially important for very young students.
The following sites are recommended for quotes:
http://www.smartquotesforkids.com/shop.html
http://www.my-inspirational-quotes.com/category/kids/
The following sites are recommended for images:
http://www.thekidzpage.com/freekidsclipart/index.htm
http://www.clipart.com (free with watermark…or purchase an inexpensive short term subscription)
Understanding Grading Activity: Show students a copy of the discussion board grading rubric https://ginnycronin.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dbrubric1.jpg and ask them to create two posts: one which meets all the criteria and one which fails all the criteria.
Role-play: Assign or allow students to self-select characters in a role-play. In groups of three or four, have the students write on the discussion board in the voice of the character which they represent. Possible applications of this concept in the content areas include:
Literature: a dinner table conversation among several authors from the same time-period
History: written letter exchange among several important characters involved in an important historical event.
Science: scientists debating whether a particular experimental design was rigorous enough to prove or disprove a well known theory.
Case-Study: Have students approach a controversial topic in their content area studies. Ask them to resolve the concern or take a position on the controversy. They must supply well organized arguments and reference outside sources. Make sure that the case study provides relevancy to the students’ lives and required them to synthesize and apply their learning at a higher thinking level. Providing an audio or video introduction for the case study may increase engagement.
Netiquette Activity: Give students multiple options for learning about netiquette:
Have students read about netiquette at http://edtech2.boisestate.edu/croninv/502/netiquette.html,
or watch a slideshow about netiquette at http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/315546/OrsburnNetiquette,
or watch this video animation here: http://www.brainpop.com/technology/computersandinternet/digitaletiquette/
or watch an online lecture with closed captioning here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1414971803138053967#
Then ask them to comment in a discussion post, which parts of netiquette they think are most important and which parts are the hardest to follow.
I Never Thought of That: After assigning readings, have the students reflect on the ideas in the readings that were new to them. Encourage them to ask questions of both themselves and each other to seek further clarification. In the end, provide a summary of the “New Thought” which the students generated.
Let Me Help: In this activity, provide a task which requires a wide variety of skills and knowledge bases. The expectation would be that no student would be able to complete the activity well without asking for help. Encourage the students, for this activity, to seek the help of classmates rather than outside resources. Students would be graded both on their polite and reasonable requests for help and their helpful offers of assistance. The goal of this activity is to help the students to view each other as a resource and to build the sense of a learning community. It would also help to allow students to shine in their own area of expertise. One possible assignment would be to have the students write a poem about a topic familiar to only a few of them (rock climbing?), to illustrate it in several different ways, to upload and publish the finished product. This would require those with the flowing skill sets to collaborate: rock-climbing experience; poetry; editing; several different media specialists ie” sketching, watercolor etc; image capturing; technology; publishing. This activity lends itself to smaller groups and an older and more experienced group of learners.
Discussion Board Management Issues
Problem: Lack of a sense of community and engagement
Solution: Provide icebreaker activities; make sure discussions and questions are relevant to the student population
Problem: Lack of commitment to the discussion board process
Solution: Provide clear explanations of the importance of building a learning community, and how different that might look in an online discussion; clearly explain expectations and correlation to grades.
Problem: Students offer only weak posts which are just agreements or opinions
Solution: Provide clear instructions; points given for robust posts; models of several acceptable posts; models of posts which will not receive points; redirect with probing higher level questions.
Problem: Lack of regular participation; rapid shallow posting at the end of a session
Solution: Require several different posting dates; teach students about the LMS ability to track participation. Encourage them to post early and often.
Problem: Inactivity from one or more students
Solution: Provide individual contact by email or phone to check in and clear up problems early on;
Problem: An over-involved student who dominates discussions
Solution: Contact the student privately and ask him/her to limit themselves to the required number of posts and the required length for a while. Ask the student to focus on depth and insight rather than length and frequency. Challenge him/her to go deeper.
Problem: Lack of feedback from the instructor.
Solution: Provide meaningful and specific feedback at predictable times and in predictable settings.
Problem: Unengaged students
Solution: Provide opportunities for students to suggest discussion topics or lead discussions; make discussions a bit controversial and relevant to their lives
Problem: Lack of higher level thinking
Solution: Use open ended and Socratic questioning http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/socratic_questions.htm and/ or use case studies. Provide scaffolding and answer prompts
Problem: Inappropriate conversations
Solution: Prevention through netiquette activity; response should be tiered starting with private correction; muting; required apology and a restitution activity; and monitored posting for a time, until regular privileges have been earned and trust has been rebuilt.
Problem: Misconceptions and misunderstandings resulting in anger or hurt feelings
Solution: Prevention through an early activity designed to have students post things in two formats: one that can be easily misunderstood and an alternative that is less open to misinterpretation. Have students respond to the “misconception” post by writing how they would perceive the post. Handle misunderstandings privately through the involved students, encouraging them to constructively address their misconceptions in the forum. Coach them through handling this publicly for the benefit of the group.
Unique Idea
To encourage a discussion that involves higher order thinking, I have found it necessary to ask very open-ended questions. For young students, for example, the 4-12 group, I have found that providing some scaffolding can be beneficial. For instance, below are some questions suggested by Blooms Taxonomy for evaluation and synthesis from http://www.officeport.com/edu/bloomq.htm and the leading answers I might provide to students:
- What would you predict/infer from…? I might think….because… However, I might also think….because…..
- What ideas can you add to…? Another idea might be…..
- How would you create/design a new…? My first step might be to…
- What might happen if you combined…? I imagine that perhaps…because….
- What solutions would you suggest for…? One idea that comes to mind is…..
- Do you agree…? At this point I dis/agree with…because….
- What do you think about…? One thought I have about….
- What is the most important…? Right now….seems most important because……
- Place the following in order of priority…
- How would you decide about…? At first I would probably….but then….
These type of word supports encourage students to consider possible answers rather than the “one right” answer. Another helpful strategy is to provide a similar question with several answers, provided by previous or “fictional” students. In this way, students learn from work samples and have a clearer idea of how this particular response strategy works. Over time, as students become more skilled and less hesitant, these supports should be faded out.
Discussion Board Rubric (in previous post)
Ginny Cronin: EDTECH Portfolio 
