Discussion Boards are not Seminars
In online courses its typical to let the brick and mortar instance of a class drive the design of the digital version. When we do this, however, we often sense that something is missing, because students and teachers alike get let down when the measure for success is the original, live, face-to-face predecessor. Discussion boards are one of those areas where, the more we treat them like their on-ground counterparts the more they become tedious and unfulfilling. So, I’m suggesting we make some tweaks to the way we set up these forums so our students are clear about the aim and intent of this dimension of the course and, more importantly, how to behave there.
Discussion Boards as Academic Writing
We can start by saying that discussion boards are, first and foremost, exercises in writing. There are things that you can do in a discussion board that you simply cannot do in a live conversation. A big one is the ability to compose a response in a non-restricted temporal space. Class discussions favor the quick-witted. Discussion boards favor the slow burners. As Scott Warnock writes in Teaching Writing Online, “I find that the natural delay helps conversations on the boards achieve a level of sophistication beyond many, if not most, onsite class discussions.”1 Why not harness the asynchronous affordances of the discussion board? Second, like all academic writing, these exercises are grounded in argumentation. This shifts the emphasis dramatically from what I have noticed in most live discussions, which tend toward associative thinking and opinion polling. With claim-making and defending as the focus, online discussions have the potential to be much more substantive (though perhaps not as electric) than spontaneous classroom conversations.
Conceptual Moves
But what does realizing these two points change in practice? Well, most discussion boards are graded on quantity of posts within a given time frame and quality of posts as measured against a rubric. However, setting specific numbers sucks the life out of the forum. And the rubrics I’ve seen lately are themselves models of the kind ambiguous and vague thinking that are rampant in discussion boards. One often reads the qualities of “outstanding” or “excellent” posts described as “insightful,” “full of thought and analysis,” “reflective,” “appropriate,” “provocative,” and “clear”. But how is a student supposed to interpret this when it comes to actually composing a post?
I’d prefer that we set up discussion boards that are more voluntary and more transparent about the kinds of intellectual behavior we want to cultivate. I’ll tackle the voluntary issue in another post, but below I’ve attempted to make some headway on the behavior side. What I’ve found is that students need to know the various “moves” that can be made in a discussion, especially when it comes to creating a “secondary post” or a response to another student’s original contribution. By detailing very specifically some of the conceptual moves that students can make within a discussion forum, this helps them write (and think) at a more concrete and sophisticated level. Here are a few that I have found work quite well in an online discussion board:
6 Concrete Moves for Student Discussion Board Posts
- Ask for Clarification or Elaboration
One of the basic moves in a conversation is getting clear about what is being said. Asking for clarification, elaboration or further evidence is a good way to get started in a serious conversation and helps move the discussion along. - Highlight Argumentative Gaps
Many arguments are sound but not complete. Highlighting gaps in an argument can help someone’s thinking become clearer and more forceful. Alternatively, pointing out a gap in an argument can help us rethink its validity. - Challenge or give a counterexample
All arguments are challengeable. What arguments might a critic give on the other side? - Draw Out the Consequences
To really understand a position, we need to see its implications. What might a particular claim look like if it were true? How would this impact a person’s life, society, or the environment? - Surface Assumptions
Many arguments contain unchallenged biases, basic theoretical models or philosophical outlooks that are working in the background. Try to tease out the reasoning behind someone’s claims and ask if you have accurately stated their underlying motivations. - Find Analogies
Most ideas are not new and can be seen in other areas and disciplines. Describe how an idea resonates with other texts, thinkers or fields.
All of these moves amount to what Graff, Birkenstein and Durst call “metacommentary,” or putting ideas to work by “drawing out important implications, explaining ideas from a different angle and clarifying how one idea supports another.”2 In sum, these moves help students to stand outside the text and analyze the ideas from different angles, which is the hallmark of critical thinking. But this happens consistently only if they enact these moves, and for this, we need to show them how.
1Scott Warnock, Teaching Writing Online (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2009), p. 70.
2Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst, They Say, I Say: Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (New York: Norton, 2009), p. 126.
