Getting participation through discussion

Abstract

Student participation is a vital component of any taught course. Where the course is concerned with the learning and teaching of theories and concepts, as opposed to skills and experiences, the key activity in which students can participate is discussion. In large classes it is impossible for teachers to engage every student in discussion but they can talk to each other. This paper relates one teacher's experience over two years of trying to encourage students to discuss concepts such as systems and information using electronic bulletin boards. The paper focuses on how the exercise has evolved over time in response to reflection on experience and suggests some guidelines for making a success of this type of exercise.

The effect of assessment on the outcomes of asynchronous online discussion as perceived by instructors

“…As discussed earlier, Dennen (2008) stresses the need to assess the 'products of learning' rather than the 'process of learning' and argues that the discussion contributions represent the latter, whereas post-discussion exercises are a better representation of the 'products of learning'. Several studies that examined the assessment of discussion contributions have reached similar conclusions and advocate the use of a reflective piece of writing that assists students in evaluating and synthesising the information presented in the discussion contributions, thereby developing critical thinking skills (Clark, 2000;Geer, 2003;Greenlaw & DeLoach, 2003;Lea, 2001). Further research into the use of a post-discussion assessment will help to clarify the benefit of this type of exercise.…”

An analysis tool for the assessment of student participation and implementation dynamics in online discussion forums

“…According to [3] "students in higher education are required to learn not only from their own experiences, but they are expected to transcend their assumptions and learn from somebody else's insights. "…”

“…[3] recommended the following four strategies: Don't over complicate the exercise; keep the volume of posting manageable; don't leave it to the students to get the discussion started; and don't assume that the students are familiar with the technology. This means that complex issues should be broken down into more specific discussion questions, each in their own separate thread.…”

“…Simply ending the forum after a set period of time and assigning grades is not enough. [3] suggests requiring the students to write a short reflective paper of what they learned following the discussion. Not only does this allow the students to internalize what they have learned but also it gives them an incentive to read the postings of others.…”

Preparing students for the workforce

“…To accelerate understaudin5 each student was assigned a research task for which they had to find 3 articles. These articles were to be reviewed and presented to the team [3], provid;n.5 a base research of 81 articles.…”