ICT in Education

915 Heuristic 1: Useful online discussion requires effective moderation.

August 19, 2007

The discussion board is a highly useful tool in network based learning, offering learners (and teachers) a space to collaborate and share information and opinions about course content and class work. As an asynchronous form of computer mediated communication, it provides flexibility, accessibility and a level playing field for learners who might not normally feel comfortable speaking up in a face-to-face class.

It’s important to recognise however, that an effective discussion board – one with regular, meaningful posts from a majority of the class – doesn’t run itself and it is the responsibility of a moderator (generally the teacher) to “initiate and sustain the interaction in a networked learning community”(Levin, 1999).

This is done initially through orientation and socialisation (Salmon, 2004) and by providing clear objectives and guidelines (Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner & Duffy, 2001) for the use of the board.

Graham et al (2001) offer a number of practical suggestions for this:

• “Discussions should be focused on a task”
• “Learners should receive feedback on their discussions”
• “Instructors should post expectations for discussions”
• “Instructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each student”

This might involve contacting the learners individually at the start of the course to ensure they are able to access the discussion board, running a face-to-face orientation session to the technology, encouraging them to make a brief post about themselves (and comment on others) and offering clear information about the role discussion plays in subject assessment.

It could also involve driving discussion by posting relevant topics or “sparks” (Salmon, 2004) and responding to queries in a timely manner.

In my role as an educational multimedia designer, I regularly work with teachers at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) who don’t understand why their students aren’t making use of the discussion boards in their WebCT courses. Frequently it’s because the learners have been told that the board is there and have then been left to their own devices with it. Other times teachers regularly post discussion questions but don’t always follow up with feedback.

I must admit that the first time I had my multimedia students use individual blogs for their work/process journal with the aim of stimulating critical reflection, half of them thought they had to set up a new blog account each week and I’d offered no real guidelines on post length, specific content or frequency – so I am aware that it’s an area that requires a certain amount of thought as a designer.

Gilly Salmon’s 2004 book “e moderating – the guide to teaching and learning online” is a great resource for teachers looking for practical guidelines. She offers a 5 stage scaffolded model which moves from Access and Motivation to Online Socialisation to Information Exchange to Knowledge Construction and finally to Development, where learners largely drive discussion on their own.

Levin, J. (1999). Understanding the Lifecycles of Network-based Learning Communities. Paper presented at Symposium 6.29 “Indicators of Change in Computer-Based Community Building” Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association,Montreal, April 1999 . Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/j-levin/Levin-Cervantes.final.html

Salmon, G (2004) emoderating – the key to teaching and learning online (2^nd ed.) London, UK. Taylor and Francis books ltd.

Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Lim, B-R., Craner, J., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Seven principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina

Entry Filed under: 915, General, constructivism, discussion, e-learning, eLearning, education design, feedback, strategies. .