5 Approaches for Enhancing Online Discussions

1. Quality Instructions and Modeling Responses

As we mentioned before, you only need to require peer replies when there is an instructional purpose for them. When there is, providing clear and direct instructions allow students to know what your expectations of them are. Effective instructions:

• Give the discussion a clear purpose by aligning to course outcomes. 
• Tell students clearly what peer replies should include, such as follow-up questions, contrary ideas, links to web resources, references to course reading, etc. 
• Give specific examples of both acceptable and unacceptable responses and peer replies.

2. Understanding the instructor's roles

The following is an excerpt from Cornell University's Center for Teaching Excellence Links to an external site.

At the beginning:

Set the tone. How formal or informal do you expect students’ posts to be? Describe and give examples of the style you expect them to follow. You may wish to establish ground rules for acceptable language and behavior and to require all participants to identify themselves by name. Students who are new to discussion boards may appreciate seeing examples of thoughtful and courteous posts.

Throughout the discussion:

Ask probing questions. Effective questions are the key to both starting and maintaining discussion. Prompt discussion by asking for clarification or evidence to support a claim, pose a problem or scenario, or play devil’s advocate. Instructors can also direct students and encourage them to respond to other posts that are either similar with their own posts, or dramatically different.

Address any incivilities as soon as they happen. An online learning environment can be tarnished quickly by unaddressed hostility. Refer to ground rules that may have established at the beginning. Think ahead about how you will address incivilities and communicate to students how you would do so (for example, feel free to delete inappropriate comments). If necessary, address inappropriate behavior offline in a private setting.

Watch out for orphaned comments and silent students. Sometimes students’ comments or questions get little or no response from other students. The authors of these orphaned comments may become discouraged and drop out of the discussion. If you see this dynamic, encourage students to respond to the orphaned comments. When quieter students participate, give them a supportive response.

At the end of the discussion:

Ensure closure through synthesis and summary. To avoid letting a threaded discussion lose its way or simply fade out, periodically pose questions that require synthesis and summary of the thread. You could also assign this task and other moderating roles to individual students.

3. The power of small group discussions

In a face to face class you would never expect every member of a class to respond to a discussion question (not to mention responding to a given number of their peers), but it is common to break students into smaller groups to discuss a topic. In Canvas you have the option to create discussion groups as well.

This can have several benefits. It can allow reluctant students to feel less pressure from being judged by the whole class, give more students the chance to express their ideas, and develop community as students get to know those in their group better.

Also consider using student roles within the groups. Roles can be adapted to fit the content of your course. Example roles could include group leader, skeptic, researcher, summarizer, illustrator, etc. Roles give each student a specific reason to participate in the discussion as well as a responsibility to be sure the discussion addresses their area of focus. 

Video:

Create Groups in Canvas

Groups: Creation & Management Links to an external site. from Canvas LMS Links to an external site. on Vimeo Links to an external site..

Side Note:
Du, Durrington and Mathews (2007) report that among those students who expressed a preference, the preferred group size was four to six students.

4. Adding a rubric to increase response quality

Adding a rubric is one way to direct your students to more authentic responses and peer replies. Well written rubrics help the students to know what your expectations are, allow students to self evaluate their response, give them more confidence in their response, and help the subjective task of grading the quality of a post or response to become more objective.

Adding a rubric to an assignment in Canvas is easily done. Watch the following video for instructions. 

Tutorial on how to create and add a rubric Links to an external site.

Posting your question or prompt and /or requiring students to make their initial post in video form, often challenges the student to have a greater understanding of the course material. The video format often encourages more authentic replies which can foster deeper levels of conversation and ultimately better understanding of the course material.

Tutorial:

Adding video with the rich content editor in Canvas