Faculty Perspective - John Stewart

In this video I had the opportunity to sit down with CCS adjunct faculty member, John Stewart to discuss a unique strategy that he uses to not only increase lecture viewership, but also to increase the quality of his discussion boards. 

Here's a snippet of John's syllabus explaining the goal of the discussion boards:

The second deadline is for the subsequent posts. With the subsequent posts it is expected that you will further your understanding of the connected topics and readings and that, in light of your improved understanding, you will revise and correct anything from your initial post that needs to be revised and corrected. As a key part of this, it is expected that you will address the video media and comment on the posts of your fellow students while engaging in critical dialog. To put this into focus, as you move from your initial post through to your subsequent posts, a key element that I want to see is continued growth and development. In order to best accomplish this task the discussion boards are set up to foster a step-bystep process of learning; the first step in this process is the initial discovery phase (as mostly done with the initial post), with the next steps being continued learning, critical reflection, dialog and revision (as done with the subsequent posts).

 

A simplified breakdown of how John designs his discussion boards:

  1. Students are tasked with a reading. Reading included a reading guide that John has created to help the students through the reading material. 
  2. After completing the reading, students are tasked to make an initial discussion board post. Focus of the post is to show evidence of reading and being the discovery phase of learning. 
  3. Once students make their post, the video lecture becomes unlocked. Students are then tasked with viewing the lecture and making a subsequent post (to themselves) that digs deeper into the content, show evidence of viewing the lecture, as well as explaining how viewing the lecture content as helped evolve their learning on the topic. 
  4. Finally, students are tasked with making at least one more post. This time to a peer. This post is designed to engage their peers and enhance the discussion. 

John was kind enough to share an example of this assignment prompt.

Download David Hume Discussion Board Prompt