ACA Distance Educator's Toolkit

ACA Distance Educator's ToolKit

Introduction

Advance Organizers

Streaming Lectures

Discussion Webs

Strategy | Key Benefits | Example 1 | Example 2 | Example 3 | Technology

     Asynchronous Discussion Forums, or Discussion Webs, are a web based mechanism for having individuals post responses to one another in a threaded discussion. The original online discussion boards, such as USENET, Compuserve Board, and others, predate the World Wide Web by several years. Accordingly, there are many examples of the effective use of discussion boards for fostering social interactivity and thoughtful discussion at a distance.

Strategy:

     This assignment sometimes will take the place of the "participation grade" in the counterpart residential course. Just as discussion in a classroom setting, the use of a discussion web as an instructional environment requires extensive ground rules for conduct. The professor can and should regulate what kind of activity occurs in the environment. Usually, assessment criteria, or a grading rubric, is made available to the students to help guide the quality of their postings. Each discussion web assignment usually has two dates associated with it: a required date for initial posting, and a required date for at least one thoughtful response to another student's initial posting. These dates help with the timeliness of responses and assists the professor with the task of assessment.

Key Benefits:

Participants of asynchronous discussion boards tend to provide more thoughtful answers than those participating in classroom discussion or real time chat rooms.

Often, students who exhibit shyness in a live class will find opportunities for expression in the online discussion environment.

An advantage for an instructor is that there is a true quantifiable record of participation which can be analyzed with minimal bias.

Example 1:

     Professor West's Social Work Community Topics distance course has a weekly discussion web assignment. For each unit, she poses a question to the group, and requires that they follow explicit guidelines.

     Discussion Web Assignment: You have just recently studied Chapter 6 in your text and have taken the online formative quiz. You should also have read the case studies: Impact of Cultural Diversity in Schools; Social Work Roles in the Schools. What is your opinion of the roles social workers can play in the schools? Initial Post by 9 p.m. Monday, November 3. Remember to follow all discussion web assignment guidelines established for this course.

Example 2:

     Professor Kitterman requires that his distance Topics in American Literature students conduct asynchronous web discussions in character. Each student is assigned several personalities from history or American fiction at the beginning of the course. There are three "games," Puritan, Founders, and Transcendentalists. Professor Kitterman acts as "past master" and awards points for effective arguments, conflict resolution, and creativity.

     Unit 2 Discussion Web Assignment: Is Native American culture primitive or civilized? What are English attitudes towards it? Comment Online on the Puritan status as a chosen people as witnessed by signs from God. Be certain to follow the Instructions for the Puritan Game.

Example 3:

     Professor Poulard requires his Environmental Science Survey learners to seek out a relevant journal article available via ACA Central Library subscription. The learner must post how they found the article (search terms) and a 300 word summary. As a follow up assignment on alternating weeks, each learner must read an article that another posted, critique the original poster's summary, and rate the relevance of the article to the current assigned readings.

Technology:

     Asynchronous Discussion Forums, or Discussion Webs, are available from within all Course Management Systems. If a CMS is not available at your institution, a rudimentary discussion web can be generated using the Microsoft FrontPage Discussion Web Wizard for use on a Windows server. There are also free-standing, no cost Discussion Web packages that your System Administrator can easily add to one of your institution's Apache-MySQL-PHP (AMP) platform web servers.

Here is a listing of some popular full featured PHP based Discussion Web Packages to pass along to your sys.admin:

http://www.phpbb.com (freeware!)

http://phorum.org (opensource - free!)

http://www.myupb.com "Ultimate PHP Board" (freeware!)

http://www.punbb.org "Pun Bulletin Board" (GNU - free!)

A popular vintage Discussion Web package is available at http://www.scriptarchive.com/wwwboard.html.
It is very basic, but will run on an old jalopy server.

Continue to the next section: Parsimony Exercises