Written Discussions

To remove technical hurdles and to ensure that students are able to engage with peers and each other (even without a strong Internet connection), you might choose to move student discussion to an asynchronous format. Create a Canvas Discussion Links to an external site. as a forum to facilitate communication and to encourage students to interact, ask questions, and respond to discussion prompts.  This is also a great way to address the federal standards about "regular and substantive interaction Links to an external site." in online learning.

Discussion Tips:

• Craft discussion questions to be as clear and as specific as possible so that students can build off of the question for a sustained response. 
  • See Stanford TeachingCommons’ “Engaging Discussions Online" Links to an external site.
  • See “Conversation Starters: Orchestrating Asynchronous Discussion to Build Academic Community among First-Year Writers” by Dan Seward Links to an external site.
    
    
• Assign roles to students so that they understand when and how they might respond to you or their peers.  For example, students might “role play” as particular kinds of respondents or you might ask them to do particular tasks (e.g. be a summarizer, a respondent, a connector with outside resources).
  
  
• Join your students in discussions so that they know you are a part of the community.  The is evidence on both sides of the issue of whether an instructor should insert themselves into the conversation.  Some students view it as necessary, otherwise the discussion is irrelevant.  Other students may feel intimidated to converse with the instructor.  In general, if you want to practice the 4 Connections, you should be a significant part of the discussions.  Here are some considerations:
  • Put students into groups so that the discussions are easier to manage.  Then you can post replies to the group in times when they may need clarification on a topic or when you want to praise them for their good work.
  • If you do not want to participate in the discussion, reach out to students individually to give them feedback on their work.  That way, the student knows you read their responses.
  • If you do not want to participate in the discussion, send a message or post an announcement to the whole class and summarize what went well in the discussions and what still needs clarification.  Again, that way, students know that you read their work.

As Flower Darby suggests in Small Teaching Online, when we are in a face-to-face class and we start a class or small group discussion, we generally do not leave the room.  We are there to guide the discussion, clarify, answer questions, provide feedback, and so forth.  If we expect students to have a class or small group discussion online, we shouldn't leave the room in that case either.

 

About this Doc

Jenae Cohn Links to an external site. and Beth Seltzer Links to an external site., both Academic Tech Specialists at Stanford, started writing this on March 6, 2020 in response to initial Covid discussion meetings.