Re-imagining The Discussion Board

Last week I shared a brief video about how you can re-imagine your online course Discussion Board. Since I know that Discussion Boards are a big part of teaching online, I decided to focus this blog post on some of the tips I shared during that brief video.

I recently inherited a course, a master shell for an online course, but when I was looking through the discussion board questions, they were a little unexciting. For example, one example said

"Explain the difference between non-experimental, quasi-experimental and experimental research designs."

While that's not a bad question, I could already anticipate that everybody was going to have the exact same answer because they're all reading the same textbook. So even if they're putting it into their own words, they're still all essentially giving me the same answer.

After I spent some time brainstorming and experimenting  a little bit, I revised the question to look like this:

"If you were conducting a research experiment to address a problem or question of interest to you, would you use a non-experimental, quasi-experimental or experimental research design? Why would you choose this design over the other two?"

Now, the student has to think about which one of these designs would they use and why? This will result in a variety of different answers, because not every student is going to choose the same experiment. In fact, nobody is going to have the same experiment. And even if they did, they're going to approach it in a different way. This makes it more exciting, more engaging and more interesting for the students and for myself.

One strategy that I have used help me develop stronger discussion questions is the PEAR Approach. PEAR stands for personal, experiential, active and reflective. I always try to ensure my questions fall into at least one of these categories. You can learn more about the PEAR approach HERE.

On Thursday, February 11th at 2PM EST I'll be hosting a webinar focused on engagement strategies for the online class entitled, 5 Tips To Increase Engagement In Your Online Class. In this webinar, I'll share:

• How to make meaningful connections with online students
  
• How to get and keep students' attention
• How to develop a sense of community in your online course
• How to develop creative assignments that really engage your online learners
• How to stay inspired about your teaching all year long

On this webinar, I'll also be sharing with you a special opportunity to stay connected to like-minded innovative online educators such as yourself and engage in creative professional development activities on a regular basis. Sign up for the webinar HERE to join in!