When are discussions the appropriate learning tool, as compared to an assignment?

      When using technology in education, choosing the right tool for the desired learning outcome is the highest priority.  In many cases where both students and faculty find they are not enjoying or not getting value from their class discussions, it is generally because a discussion was not the appropriate tool for that circumstance. We feel discussions are the appropriate tool in these two cases:

1. When there is value in students seeing others responses, but no need to reply. Use the discussion tool, but don't require responses. For example: In the question we asked earlier:

"What instructions have you given students in the past for online discussions? Which were successful?"

There is value in reading the responses of others so that you might see something that you hadn't thought of, but there could be little value in forcing a reply.

2. When there is value in students responding to their classmates' initial posts. Only require peer replies when those replies add value to the original poster or lead to further dialogue. The peer reply should not be the end of the conversation. Examples would be when students are giving constructive feedback to their peers, asking additional questions to further the conversation, or providing an opposing idea as a challenge to the answer.

Choose an assignment instead of a discussion

      When you want students to respond to a question or prompt, but there is no value in students reading or responding to each others' answers, this should be an assignment. Using a discussion in this case, is often what causes students to dislike discussions (as expressed in many of the Tweets to the right) because they can tell that it's just busy work with no real learning value.

What students think about poorly designed online discussions...

Can you hear students saying things like this about your class discussions?