Lowney’s course is a “supersection” hybrid that has an enrollment of 150 to 300 students and meets Tuesdays and Thursdays with a significant online component. She had one discussion per week that required students to read 50 percent of their classmates’ posts and contribute to the discussion to prepare them for the next class session.

“I began to notice that the academically stronger students would post early; the weaker students tended to post in the last 12 hours of a seven-day window, and many of their posts, while not quite taken word-for-word from the stronger students, were pretty close. It looked [as though] they were waiting for the stronger students to post in these open discussions to figure out what the answers were. Not everybody was engaging with the material in the way that I wanted them to engage with it,” Lowney says.

She also observed that students who posted earlier and engaged in original thinking did better on tests. Even in smaller groups the same “free rider” problem occurred, and Lowney had the additional problem of managing multiple discussions. (While Blackboard makes it easy to divide students into groups and present the same discussion prompt, knowing which comment she made in which group proved to be a challenge.)

Lowney now assigns a private prewrite, which asks students to apply concepts. Students do not see each other’s posts, and Lowney responds to each, offering comments that help prepare for the in-class discussion.

She also says that this format has improved students’ engagement with the material. “I wouldn’t say the weaker students are always a lot stronger than they were, but what I’m seeing is that my weaker students’ test scores have made a steady improvement from when I had the open, public discussion,” Lowney says.

In addition to improved test scores, Lowney has observed improved interaction in the face-to-face sessions. “Classes are much more engaging because I know that they’ve had to read the material before and engage with it,” Lowney says. “I’m getting more questions in class because I’m priming the pump with my comments.”

Of course, making these prewrites private eliminates the benefits of writing for and receiving feedback from peers. One way that Lowney addresses this issue is by sharing (anonymously) sample private prewrites in class, highlighting common mistakes and things done well. “I’ll build that into my PowerPoint and say, ‘This is something that cropped up a lot.’ Most students will see their work at some point in one of the PowerPoints, and I’ll share good examples as well, especially early in the semester so that I can model a successful answer and ask students to tear it apart and see what made it successful,” Lowney says.

These private prewrites are more work for the students and the instructor. Responding to each prewrite is quite time-intensive for Lowney, particularly in such high-enrollment courses. And one of the challenges is providing feedback to students before the in-class discussion. “If you’re not able to get them all graded, you can get a sample graded so you can use them in the lecture the next day. This makes it seem as though it’s not just busywork,” Lowney says.

To help motivate students to take these prewrites seriously, Lowney shares with them data that shows how grades have improved since she began using this approach.

Each module still has an open discussion where students can post messages or ask questions, but students rarely use it. While this is not really an issue in a hybrid course where students have opportunities for face-to-face interaction with peers, it would be an issue in a fully online course. That said, Lowney does see the potential for limited use of this technique in totally online courses. “If I were going to have two assignments a week, I’d have one private and one open, because I do think there needs to be some community in an online course that an open discussion allows for,” she says.

Lowney has not tried this approach in upper-division courses, but she speculates that she might take more of a backseat role in these discussions. She sees the merit of including open discussions in introductory courses, perhaps with more private interaction in upper-level courses. “It depends on what you’re teaching. What are your goals? What’s the rest of the course like? What are your other assignments?” Lowney says.

Reprinted from Private Journal Replaces Discussion Forum in Hybrid Course Online Classroom, 12.5 (2012): 7-8.

1. Articles—Post an article in the discussion board and have students do an activity related to its content. This gives students more content on which to comment than a typical prompt that consists solely of a question.
2. Audio—Post an audio prompt. Listening is an integral part of learning a language. It also is a medium that students are comfortable with and find interesting. Ammar has students post their notes on radio broadcasts in a threaded discussion. “Even though everybody is listening to the same [content], they may catch different things,” Ammar says.
3. Video—Even more engaging is video. Simply post a link to a YouTube video (or one from another source), and ask students to comment or answer an open-ended questions about it.

In courses that are intended to develop students’ writing skills, the discussion board can be an excellent way to get students to write on a regular basis. However, one of the obstacles to students’ full participation in this type of learning is some students’ reluctance to share things that they consider too personal.

One way to address this is to have students write in personal online journals that only the individual student and instructor can access. Ammar does not give students the option of posting in the journal instead of posting to the discussion board. They are both required activities, but some students tend to participate more actively in one or the other.

In some cases the prompt can be the same for the threaded discussion and the journal entry. For example, she once asked students to view an ABC News video of an art project in New York City in which pianos were placed throughout the city for members of the public to play. The video showed interviews with people who played. In the threaded discussion, students summarized the comments of several interviewees, and she asked students write about their personal reflections about the project.

Ammar does not grade online discussion posts or journal entries for grammar or spelling “because I just want to see that they’re able to communicate. I check those things in their [formal] papers.”

Reprinted from Tips From the Pros: Creative Uses of Discussion Boards Online Classroom, (February 2012): 1.3.

Educators need to take into account the characteristics of the online classroom when trying to incorporate active learning into online courses, Beezley says. For example, the nonlinear nature of the online classroom and the lack of face-to-face interaction with its visual cues make it difficult to ensure that all learners are experiencing the course in the same manner.

“Face-to-face discussions are linear. Everyone has a shared experience. The conversation slowly builds, and hopefully by the end you’ve moved everyone from one level of understanding to a new level of understanding. In an online environment when you have students participate in a discussion through a discussion board, it’s not linear at all. There’s not necessarily a shared experience,” Beezley says.

Threaded discussion summaries
To help create shared learning experiences, Beezley has students take turns summarizing the threaded discussions. This helps create a common understanding, serves as a means of assessing students’ understanding of the content, and gives them the chance to actively engage with the course content.

Rather than posting these summaries to the discussion board, Beezley has students post them to a course wiki or to Google Docs. This increases the accessibility of the summaries, which can be important for future reference and to enable all the students to edit them in case the student who did the original summary overlooked or misinterpreted key concepts.

Beezley recommends discussing the summary (synchronously or asynchronously) with the students to assess its accuracy and prevent incorrect information from becoming ingrained in students’ minds.

Synchronous collaboration
Beezley is an advocate of synchronous sessions as a way to create active learning opportunities. She uses Wimba, a live classroom program, to facilitate synchronous collaboration, including discussions (chat and/or voice), polling, and breakout rooms in which students can work on shared documents and report back to the entire class.

Beezley prefers to have students actually talk to each other as they collaborate in the breakout rooms. As in a face-to-face classroom, the instructor can visit with each group to ensure that they are going in the right direction.

“If things are going well, I usually leave them to do what they’re doing and know that they’re going to be reporting back when we meet in the main room. I find that I can usually just be the observer because the conversations are going well. I think the trick is to try to pull them back to the main room before they get to the point where the discussion has died down. Sometimes groups may not be done discussing before you pull them all back and ask them to report on whatever they did. [You need to] establish a culture of accountability, making sure that they need to use the time wisely, or they will run out of time and won’t be able to complete the task,” Beezley says.

As in the face-to-face classroom, spontaneous off-topic conversations are likely to occur in the synchronous online environment. While too much of this can detract from the learning experience, a certain amount of it is productive. “Some of my best learning in college occurred while walking out of a classroom when the class was over and asking, ‘Did you understand this part of the lecture? It was confusing to me.’ Conversations like that are hard to have in the online environment. When you put people together in small groups, sometimes they have those kinds of conversations. I think those conversations are a good thing.”

To help facilitate these collaborations, Beezley assigns each student to a base group of students who work together throughout the course. “Instead of having one large group, I like the idea of everyone taking part in the same discussion in small groups of five students who are always working together and talking things through and reporting back to the class.”

Ready, set, go
As a graduate student, Beezley participated in synchronous sessions facilitated by her instructor Peyri Herrera, who used a technique Beezley calls “Ready, set, go” to actively engage students.

It’s a simple understanding check in which the instructor asks students to answer a question in chat and to submit their answers simultaneously on cue. The questions can be simple or complex. They can test recall or higher-order thinking. The key is to have students hit submit simultaneously so everyone’s answer is revealed at the same time.

“As a student I really feared that I would be wrong, because when it’s live there isn’t as much time to think about a response as there would be asynchronously. I think that fear is a healthy thing for students to feel. It raises your level of engagement. It makes you pay attention. It really helped me learn because whenever I was right I felt validated. But when I was wrong, I would pay attention even more.

“When you have that opportunity for the synchronous exchange of ideas, I think the stakes are higher than when it is asynchronous. When it is asynchronous, you have time to think through your responses, and I think that’s a good thing to have those times as well, but I think in that asynchronous event you have to think on your feet and apply what you know quickly. As an instructor it’s a great opportunity to really see where your students are and understand how much they’ve learned,” Beezley says.

Excerpted from Ideas for Active Online Learning, Online Classroom, (December 2011): 1, 3.

Many students thrive the online environment, due in part to the familiarity of the online environment itself as well as the autonomy online education offers. In my experience with online art classes, there are a variety of strategies an instructor can use to teach and assess the historical context and formal/stylistic qualities of art from different periods in art history. With a little preparation and patience, instructors can provide online students a meaningful and memorable experience with art history. I would suggest that a similar approach could work in a whole variety of disciplines.

Part of the effectiveness of art history online derives the framework I set up weeks in advance. To that end, the first and most effective strategy for teaching art history online involves delivering a primer in art vocabulary. In the first week of the course, students are asked to review a PowerPoint lecture that establishes the formal and stylistic criteria for evaluating art. Often, students approach art history with a great deal of anxiety due in part to the status and language of fine art. By equipping students with the language to speak about art in a meaningful way from the start, they feel less intimidated by the art they encounter later in the course. Terms like “line,” “shape,” and “color” are not as menacing when decoded, and students quickly realize they are pretty familiar with the way these elements appear in their own material culture.

Each week students participate in the class through a variety of means, such as doing the readings, reviewing an online lecture, participating in a discussion board forum, writing a summary paper, taking an online quiz, or a combination of activities. When students are assigned to one of the learning activities, they are asked to relate the work or context to their own life in some way. This helps the student develop an understanding of the material scaffolded from their own experiences, thus providing a meaningful connection with what they see.

By design, the asynchronous discussion board forum allows the student ample time to answer the question effectively. When an instructor lectures in a traditional classroom, students usually do not have time to reflect on the instructor’s questions, which can often be met with blank stares (and complementary cricket sounds) or the “What do you want me to see?” response. The asynchronous nature of online courses provides students ample time to consider their own knowledge of the topic as well as refer to their course materials when constructing their answers. It is important to provide the questions well in advance, so the student can discern the most important nuggets from their required readings and accompanying lectures. In essence, as the instructor, I am providing a framework for the student to work from, guiding them toward the most important information.

Lastly, in addition to giving students ample time to confer with their text and instructor-provided resources, asynchronous art history coursework affords students time to complete their own research surrounding the topic. Granted, this can be a bit dangerous, but if the instructor directs the students to an “approved” list of links to virtual museums, videos, social media and academic friendly websites, the student can use the tools most aligned with their own learning style.

Melanie J. Trost is an instructor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tiffin University. She also teaches in the Language, Literature and Arts Department at Jackson Community College.

Using synchronous tools may at first seem impractical for online instructors. If students are taking online classes, doesn’t that mean they want to be able to work whenever, wherever, with no time or date restrictions? In many cases, yes—but there are times when online students need one-on-one help, and synchronous tools are able to facilitate that support much more effectively than the usual email back-and-forth or phone conversation. I’ve found that when I’ve used synchronous tools with students, they were more willing to ask questions and interact with their fellow students in the classroom afterwards. Let’s explore some reasons why.

• Synchronous tools can help humanize the classroom. Instead of words posted on an electronic screen, we become real to our students, not just words or avatars or photos on a screen — we become human.
• Setting up open office hours via a synchronous tool allows students to reach out in a specific time window with questions and get a real-time answer. The power of that communication is twofold. First, students immediately get a sense of community. Someone is there, willing to work with them on their concerns and to answer their questions. Secondly, students can still reach out for help using their computer, and do not have to reach for their phones to connect to instructors to hear their voice.
• Many synchronous tools allow us to use video or face-to-face chat, allowing the student to see our faces as we speak to them about their direct concern. Visual learners can watch us talk through a problem using video and screen capture or web navigation tools. Screen sharing tools, such as those embedded in Elluminate, allow students to share their screens with us, so we can take a look at a paper draft in process or a math problem that’s only halfway completed.
• Both students and instructors are learning while interacting. Communicating in the online classroom is very different than in a traditional face-to-face classroom. Students utilizing synchronous tools to discuss issues with instructors are required to develop a new communication skill set, learning to navigate a different and unique way of communicating to reach the desired result. Similarly, instructors must not only model effective communication with students during the session, but also test and stretch their skill set in working with new technologies to reach out to students effectively. Both instructors and students learn what works and what doesn’t, but instead of doing this individually, they are learning as a team, simultaneously. That distinction is important.
• Synchronous tools require real-time teamwork. Both instructors and students must be open and willing to reach out in order to find a solution for an issue, and this requires working together in tandem—brainstorming, discussing, even negotiating. Modeling this for students in the synchronous environment helps students bring it to the asynchronous environment, such as the discussion board or group project areas of the course.

Michelle Kosalka is the program chair for English and Communications at Herzing University Online, and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was recently named the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) 2011 National Teacher of the Year.

To ensure that your responses to student postings in discussion are effective, incorporate the following ideas:

The umbrella fact for all your responses: everyone in the class can read your postings. Each time we respond to a student posting we are also posting to the whole class—and your words will remain “alive” for the entirety of the course. Always have your postings reflect a professional and dedicated instructor, be certain any facts and course information are in sync with what is included in the course (including textbook and other class resources), and use your postings to reinforce important course lessons and to motivate students.

Be a model of what you require of students in their postings. You no doubt require that the majority of student postings be substantive in nature, and thus so should yours. Never berate a student/the class or write in a negative tone. If additional information of a more specific nature is needed in response to a student posting, offer a general response in the discussion and send a private email or posting to the student. Always be upbeat. Students look to you for guidance, and the discussion is where you are most visible; it is there that you can have the greatest impact on the students.

Don’t be afraid to let personality and humor enter your responses. Because we are using written words, not spoken ones, the facial expressions, tone, and gestures that make our spoken words take on defined meanings are missing in the online classroom. Certainly, punctuation serves this function to some extent—but injecting large doses of an upbeat personality and some occasional humor helps engage the class, creates a stronger student-instructor rapport, and helps students stay more involved in the discussion.

While your response will be to one student, always include the whole class. As most people in the class, if not everyone, will be reading your response to a student posting, be sure you include the entire class. This might be done in several ways, but here are two: “Cathy—and everyone in the class—the example mentioned of …” or “Class, what Cathy pointed out in this posting reminds us…” Each of these gives recognition to the student’s posting—crucial in letting the students know that you read each post, and to establishing a stronger individual student-instructor rapport. This also lets the class know that your response to the student is not limited to the student but is information for all.

When applicable, use examples or experiences from your life in responding. Students enjoy peeking into the lives of their instructors. Offering bits and pieces of your life outside of class will certainly make you more approachable—but be sure you use your life experiences and situations for the benefit of underscoring, highlighting, and reinforcing lessons of the course.

Use your responses as opportunities to further involvement in class discussion. Some of your responses may simply be statements, and that’s fine—but remember that statements by an instructor in a discussion have a 50-50 shot of getting students to respond to them; you are hoping that the subject and tone of your post will encourage students to respond—which makes for the ideal discussion. However, if you end your responses with a question to the class, this almost ensures student responses to your posting: many students will want to show their involvement (partially to receive a good discussion grade!), and it is human nature to respond to a question.

Create a bank of the best responses that you post for reuse in future classes. As you respond to student discussion postings you will find that some of your substantive responses are really good—so good you’d like to use them for another class! There is nothing wrong with this—create an online folder labeled “Responses for Student Discussions, Class XXX, Week YYY,” deposit your selected responses there, and then use them when appropriate for future classes.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from “Teaching Online With Errol: Creating Effective Responses to Student Discussion Postings.” Online Classroom, April 2010: 6, 7.

A key success factor for online courses is vibrant threaded discussions that constitute a significant part of students’ participation grade. Understandably, a discussion rubric is made available to students so that they know what criteria are being used to judge their discussion posts. In reviewing a discussion rubric by Edelstein and Edwards (2002) for use in assessing student discussion posts, which was endorsed by Kimball and Jazzar (2011, January) for building more vibrant online discussions, I had a reservation. I found that the rubric categories were applicable but the language used in describing the various criteria needed to be more culturally sensitive. In particular, international students, the majority of whom speak English as a second language, are not as direct as U.S. students in their communication, so the original language used in the rubric may conflict with international students’ cultural experiences and expectations.

The following rubric includes suggestions for how you can modify the descriptions of your rubric categories:

Discussion Rubric Category	Original Wording	Culturally Sensitive Wording
Contributions to Learning Community	Does not make effort to participate in learning community as it develops; seems indifferent	Contributions to online learning community as it develops not evident; suggests indifference
Promptness and Initiative	Does not respond to most postings; rarely participates freely	Non-response to most discussion posts evident; voluntary participation not evident most times
Expression Within the Post	Does not express opinions or ideas clearly; no connection to topic	Unclear expression of opinions or ideas evident in posts; posts reflect disconnection to topic
Delivery of Posts	Utilizes poor spelling and grammar in most posts; posts appear “hasty”	Rules of grammar and spelling overlooked in most posts; evidence of hurried expressions in posts

These suggested modifications use less direct expression and take the attention away from the student and places more emphasis on the contents of discussion posts. This approach lessens the risk of any cultural insensitivity toward students that may impact negatively on future enrollment in online courses.

References:
Edelstein, S., & Edwards, J. (2002). If you build it, they will come: building learning communities through threaded discussions. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, volume V (1). Retrieved February 2, 2011, from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html

Kimball, D., & Jazzar, M. (2011, January). Enhancing learning through vibrant online discussions. Faculty Focus. Retrieved February 2, 2011, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/author/kimballjazzar/

Institute of International Education (2010). Press release: International student enrollments rose
modestly in 2009/10, led by strong increase in students from China. Retrieved February 2, 2011, from http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2010/2010-11-15-Open-Doors-International-Students-In-The-US

Sloan-C. (2010). Class differences: Online education in the United States, 2010.
Retrieved February 2, 2011, from http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/class_differences

Debra Ferdinand, Ph.D, E-tutor, University of the West-Indies.

• Be explicit and optimistic about expectations for course participation. “I tell students upfront, — ‘I want you to sign in at last three times a week and your attendance in this course is being monitored.’ By doing this, I hope to create a little momentum, get them in the habit of coming to the course. If they’re more active in the course, I’ve found that they tend to become a little bit more motivated,” Alejandro said.
• Encourage students to talk to one another and question each other. Build this into your discussions by having students post a message and respond to others. This reduces the feeling of isolation and creates “a little bit of a cohort effect.” Students who get to know one another tend to want to take subsequent online courses together, which can improve motivation as well. Positive interactions among students can help motivate students who are not as comfortable in the online environment because they feel that they can rely on the faculty member and classmates, Alejandro said.
• Build in accountability by assigning students on a rotating basis to summarize the weekly discussion, Dennis said.
• Link discussion topics to learning outcomes. Dennis keeps a bank of questions and looks for new ways of asking them. She keeps the learning objectives in front of her and tries to match the questions to the learning objectives week by week. When she has trouble coming up with good questions, she’ll often go back to the readings. “I take responsibility for that. That’s much better in the long run than putting up questions that you know at the time are kind of so-so,” Dennis said. After students post a couple of things, she monitors the discussion to determine how to improve it and keep it lively.
• Have students contribute discussion questions. Alejandro suggests dividing assignments or chapters into sections and have students contribute the questions that are going to be asked in a given week. This gives students the opportunity to ask questions that are relevant to them.

Excerpted from “Tips from the Pros – Maintaining Motivation in Online Discussions.” Online Classroom, November 2009, 1, 7.

But a funny thing happened in John Orlando’s courses when he started using VoiceThread — students began posting more than what was required, and they were far more engaged. In addition, he says, students reported that they enjoyed sharing their thoughts on what they were learning.

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos. It allows users to navigate slides and leave comments in five ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video. Typically, the instructor loads his or her narrative slides and students can then add their comments at any point within the lecture.

In the recent online seminar How to Engage Students with Interactive Online Lectures, Orlando, instructional resource manager at the Norwich University School of Graduate Studies, provided examples of VoiceThreads, and explained how to create one for your course.

According to Orlando, the advantages of using VoiceThread for your online discussions include:

• Student driven discussion: Discussion originates from the students themselves, and thus students tend to bring more of themselves into the conversation. Discussion is freer and more open, touching on a wider variety of issues.
• A growing lecture: Discussion in a traditional online forum never leaves the classroom.
  The class is archived and discussion forums are wiped clean for the next group, meaning
  that the insights are lost. But because discussion in VoiceThread is attached to the lecture itself, which can then be used for the next class, students are adding to the lecture, which grows from class to class. Students contribute to an ongoing conversation with future classes.
• Improved social presence: Students find that the ability to see and hear their instructor and classmates improves the sense of social presence of others in the classroom.
• Better understanding of nuance: Students are better able to understand the nuances of discussion when they can hear the tone in someone’s voice.
• Student projects: VoiceThread is a great way for students to deliver projects and solicit feedback from others.

The seminar also included a demonstration of VideoAnt, which allows users to make text-based annotations to online videos, and advice on how to use digital storytelling to help personalize the learning experience.

The keystone of online discussions, which result in meaningful learning for the student, is vibrant discussion. Vibrant discussions which are highly collaborative in nature inspire the construction of meaningful knowledge by building and expanding learning (Schellens & Valcke, 2005). Vibrant discussions need to optimize the energy and innovation of human thought and potential.

In essence, energetic and innovative discussions are developed through the scaffolding of novel thinking, original writing, and pertinent theory to construct and support new and higher level critical thinking by the learner. In addition, using one’s own experience as a filter, these vibrant discussions inspire, support, and honor a diversity of thought through the use of probing and clarifying questions and by validating the thoughts of other students. To illustrate vibrant discussions, please consider the following school leadership post by Jonathan, one of our learners, as well as the instructor’s response which illustrates how a reply to a student posting can be constructed to further a vibrant discussion:

Jonathan: “School leaders today need to be more than managers; they must be instructional leaders. Instructional leaders focus upon student achievement and assist and support teachers in promoting the success of each student.”

Instructor: “Powerful point! You stated “Instructional leaders focus upon student achievement and assist and support teachers in promoting the success of each student.” Based upon this week’s readings of Marzano, in what ways should instructional leaders support teachers and why, Jonathan and our EDLD 8708 colleagues?

The first two affirmative words “powerful point” demonstrate the instructor’s affirmation and appreciation for Jonathan’s thoughtful posting. The quotation of Jonathan’s own words dignifies and personalizes Jonathan’s thoughts. Theory is interwoven into practice by including the research. The concluding comment personalizes Jonathan by name and extends inclusiveness to his classmates with an invitation to further expand, enhance and propel thought.

Our aforementioned example is presented to illustrate the foundation of vibrant discussions. It includes a student demonstrating understanding, comprehension, personalization, and individualization, while the instructor displays inclusiveness, even as he or she inspires higher order thinking.

Intentional implementation of this powerful technological learning strategy will enhance vibrant discussion board posts and responses that fortify and escalate the true meaning of sharing, learning and growing. Discussion boards need to be built from “the ground up” with vibrant thoughts contributed by each e-learner – thread by thread – until the very structure itself is stable and free-standing. (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002). Please give our strategy a try in your next course and watch learner engagement and achievement soar!

References
Edelstein, S & Edwards, J. (2002). If you build it, they will come: building learning communities through threaded discussions. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, volume V (1). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html

Schellens, T. & Valcke, M. (2005). Collaborative learning in asynchronous discussion groups: What about the impact on cognitive processing? Computers in Human Behavior, 21, 957-975.

Drs. Dale Kimball and Michael Jazzar have collectively served 26 years in higher education as professors, dissertation mentors, and administrators at Western Michigan University, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and for several online universities. They have authored books, book chapters, journal publications, and designed and developed online courses. They may be contacted by e-mail at kimballd@live.com or mjazzar@verizon.net.

1. Post complete text versions of the audio portion of the streamed presentations. My limited study suggests that student learning is most enhanced when students can study both streamed presentations and transcripts of the audio. You should encourage students to study both the presentations and the transcripts and advise them to avoid studying only the presentations.
2. Keep your presentations relatively short. I suggest keeping them under 15 minutes. If this is not sufficient to cover all the content for a given topic, then the content should be chunked at appropriate spots into several presentations. Each presentation should come with a table of contents that students can click on to navigate within the presentation.
3. Plan out the slide or video portion of the presentation first. This will allow you to focus on the main ideas that you want to emphasize, and it will provide you with an outline for developing the narration. You should make use of images to illustrate and represent ideas and arguments. This will allow you to present content in several modes.
4. Write out a script of the narration. Doing this will help you to organize your thoughts. It will also result in fewer audio mistakes, since you can add the narration by simply reading the script. Writing out the narration beforehand will also provide you with a text version of the narration that you can post to the course website.
5. Choose presentation software that allows you to easily edit the separate video and audio portions of the presentation and that in a few simple steps converts the presentation into a format for streaming over the Web.

Jerry Kapus is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Stout.

From Tips from the Pros – 5 Tips for Using Streaming Audio and/or Video, Online Classroom, May 2009.

I require each student to post at least one question to the entire class. Each question must be a question the student has always wanted to ask people of a specific gender, race, religion, etc. Anyone in the class is welcome to answer, but students who fit the demographic are especially encouraged to respond.

Students come up with a wide variety of questions, sometimes simple, sometimes complicated. What impresses me is how appropriate the questions are, and even when some of them seem a little on the “ignorant” side, the students who respond are kind and do not demean the person who asked. (“Do women really think men should know what they are thinking?” “How much did Obama’s race factor into your decision to vote for him?” “Is it true that Catholics pray to Mary? Why do they do that?”)

After the week is over, I am always amazed at the sheer number of questions students ask (many ask more than the minimum one) as well as the number of answers that are provided. Moreover, after this particular discussion the subsequent class discussions always seem to take on a much more intimate level than previous ones.

I use this particular activity in my family relations online class, particularly during the assigned chapter on developing relationships as a means of demonstrating how relationships grow through appropriate and honest self-disclosure.

However, this activity can be applied to other chapters in the class, and I have also altered it to jumpstart discussions and create more cohesion in other online classes.

I encourage other instructors to try this for an online discussion. Make sure you give your class a few weeks before you implement this activity. You will also want to specify your guidelines up front, to ensure students are clear the type of questions to ask (provide examples if necessary) as well as how to appropriately answer them. You will need to monitor this discussion tightly, especially if you need to edit/delete a potentially inappropriate or even offensive remark, as well as privately discuss the remark with that particular student.

I wish you well and I hope it helps your online discussions and class as much as it has helped mine.

Jim Guinee is a licensed psychologist in the state of Arkansas. He has served as staff psychologist and director of training at the University of Central Arkansas Counseling Center since 1994, and as an adjunct professor in the Department of Family & Consumer Sciences at UCA since 2001.

Reprinted from Tips From The Pros: Ask a Question, Get an Answer, July 2009, Online Classroom.

Students in a face-to-face classroom can stop the instructor during the lecture to ask questions, whereas students in an online classroom generally read or watch the lecture at one time and then discuss it in a separate forum later. Any questions or thoughts that the students have during the lecture are generally forgotten by the time that the students reach discussion. Plus, online discussion is usually tracked into preset questions determined by the instructor.

But a new technology allows online instructors to reconnect discussion to the lecture. VoiceThread is a web service that allows users to upload PowerPoint slides, videos, photos, etc. and add voice narration to create a multimedia presentation. But best of all, viewers can add their own comments to the presentation via voice or text. With VoiceThread students can attach questions or thoughts about a lecture directly to the lecture itself when and where they apply. The result is a discussion that is integrated into the lecture itself.

The advantages of VoiceThread include:

• Student driven discussion: Discussion originates from the students themselves, and thus students tend to bring more of themselves into the conversation. Discussion is freer and more open, touching on a wider variety of issues.
• A growing lecture: Discussion in a traditional online forum never leaves the classroom. The class is archived and discussion forums are wiped clean for the next group, meaning that the insights are lost. But because discussion in VoiceThread is attached to the lecture itself, which can then be used for the next class, students are adding to the lecture itself, which grows from class to class. Students contribute to an ongoing conversation with future classes.
• Improved social presence: Students find that the ability to see and hear their instructor and classmates improves the sense of social presence of others in the classroom.
• Better understanding of nuance: Students are better able to understand the nuances of discussion when they can hear the tone in someone’s voice.
• Student Projects: VoiceThreads are a great way for students to deliver projects and solicit feedback from others.

New users can create up to three VoiceThreads for free, and after that reduced higher ed pricing is available. VoiceThreads can be password protected to provide the same level of security as any learning management system. Set one up and try it yourself!

To learn more about VoiceThread and how it’s being used in education, visit these sites:

VoiceThread introduction: http://VoiceThread.com/#u189469.b21651.i122786
Creating a VoiceThread: http://VoiceThread.com/#q.b409.i848804
Student outcomes: http://VoiceThread.com/#q+college.b99673.i508133
Art class example: http://VoiceThread.com/#q+college.b8863.i62483
Student project: http://VoiceThread.com/#q+poetry.b425796.i2574380
VoiceThread 4 Education Wiki: http://VoiceThread4education.wikispaces.com

John Orlando, PhD, is the Program Director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

If you teach or design online courses, you may be looking for ways to do things differently as well. Maybe have more fun. Engage yourself and your students more. The first thing to do may be to think differently about how your courses should work. Get out of a rut or the don’t-fix-it-if-it-ain’t-broke way of thinking. I face some typical objections when I try to convince instructors and instructional designers to try new approaches.

Why fix it if it ain’t broke?
Some folks tell me it’s silly to mess with what works. Thinking through how you can do whatever it is you do better is a mark of professional excellence in any field. Do you have courses that lack “umph”? Where students seem to just be going through the motions? Too many dropouts or no-shows? Then it’s past time for making some changes, and I’m hoping to help.

Some instructors tell me that their subject matter is inherently boring. No subject is inherently boring. Courses are boring if the instructor is bored or boring. Courses can be boring if the content and assignments are unimaginative. Courses are often boring if the course content and assignments aren’t connected to the world around us.

We’ll start our journey by looking at one approach that can be used to improve the connection between you and your online students early in the course.

In many online courses, it takes a while for students to connect with the instructor and other students. Asynchronous communications (typically through email and discussion postings) take time; time for a reply; time to understand what someone means; time to get a feeling for the course, instructors, and other students. And this delay makes some students, especially those who are new to online courses, feel like they are in a large city but are all alone. This can be a huge problem, and it’s one we don’t do enough to rectify. Students who begin online courses with concerns—about the difficulty of the content and course, about using unfamiliar course systems, and about staying motivated and on track—are worried and looking for reasons to either be less worried or jump ship.

Research shows that online course dropout rates are affected by many things, including not being firmly engaged and successful early on. There are many ways to create opportunities for early engagement, but the opportunity to be engaged live with the instructor and other students early on can short-circuit the time and effort needed to feel connected (and likely to stay) as well as allay concerns about learning online.

You may think this is crazy. Your students may be all over the world. And they typically take online courses because they want the flexibility to attend whenever it is convenient for them. But chances are that quite a few do want to connect with you and will go out of their way to do so.

There are numerous tools that can help you connect live with students. You can use them to do introductions early on, answer questions throughout the course, hold office hours, meet with members of project teams, and so on. Some of these may be available within your course management system, but if these tools aren’t available or are available but don’t work too well, there are many free or very inexpensive tools that can be used

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer, writer, and author, who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com/.

Excerpted from Online Teaching Fundamentals: You, Live: Pump Up Your Online Courses, Part 1, November 2008, Online Classroom.

On the other hand, using class wiki projects can be challenging at first. Understanding the wiki features and setting up clear instructions will help streamline the wiki administration process. Here is a list of issues and ideas for you to consider when you start to use wikis in your classes.

Technical issues – Instructors and students can experience technical issues using wikis, especially when starting out. For example, you might have difficulties adjusting font size, adding new page links and modifying heading styles when you start to learn the tool. Depending on prior technical capabilities, setting up a class wiki project can also be time-consuming for both students and instructors. Since most wikis are third-party tools that operate outside of the course management systems, such as Blackboard, creating wiki templates and enrolling students in groups can add up to instructors’ regular teaching load.

Collaboration issues – Effective collaboration is always a challenge in team projects, whether it is a face-to-face class or an online class. Wikis are no exception. As with any group project, an entire team can be affected by late contributions from just one team member. The good news for instructors is that most wikis include a tracking feature that allows them to see if all team members have contributed equally.

Professionalism – Most of the wiki projects are open for the public to view, which can be good and bad. On the positive side, instructors can invite subject-matter experts to participate remotely in students’ wiki assignments. Plus, instructors often find that the openness of wikis motivates students to do well and take ownership of their work assignments. At the same time, not everyone thinks about whether their works are professional or may forget that anyone could see if it’s not password-protected.

Training – Since wikis are a new technology, it’s important to offer your students training sessions – either as an in-class orientation or an online tutorial – once you’ve spent time familiarizing yourself with the tool. You can offer instructions, such as PowerPoint presentations, videos and handouts with screen shots to walk students through the learning process. You also may want to set up models or templates for students to follow and help organize their wiki interfaces.

Clear expectations – Setting clear expectations are important, especially in an assignment where students are learning a new technology. To minimize the learning curve, instructors can offer an assignment example for students to view and let them know what you expect to see on wikis before students start their assignments. In this way, instructors can avoid a lot of confusion from students.

Make it optional – Many students love the wiki option and have fun using wikis as a learning tool. However, wikis are not for everybody. It is recommended to make wiki activities optional for students, especially if you have a group of mixed-background students. Some older students who have other work and family responsibilities may be resistant. It is convenient if those students have the option to turn in regular papers to meet course requirements.

Dr. Baiyun Chen is an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida. She has worked with professors in diverse disciplines on integrating technologies into curriculum.

What is educationally valuable talk?
With its emphasis on high-level negotiation of meaning, educationally valuable talk (EVT) is a form of representation in text-based communication whereby students “collaboratively display constructive, and at times, critical engagement with the ideas or key concepts that make up the topic of an online discussion, and build knowledge through reasoning, articulation, creativity, and reflection” (Uzuner, 2007, p. 402).

Discourse that is representative of EVT is the hallmark of successful online classrooms as it facilitates higher-order learning. However, in online classes where there are minimum posting requirements, students’ tendency to meet the required amount in an obligatory fashion usually leads to interactions that do not have potential educational value as they do not contribute to the learning community’s pool of knowledge. Uzuner (2007) characterizes such conversations as educationally less valuable talk (ELVT)—talk that “lacks substance in regards to critical and meaningful engagement with the formal content or ideas that are discussed in the posts of others in an online discussion” (p. 404).

There can be little doubt that ELVT does occur to at least some degree in almost all online classes. The prevalence of this type of talk becomes the most troubling issue, in fact a nightmare, to the online instructors. The question then arises: How can instructors ensure educationally valuable talk in their online classes?

Suggestions for instructors
Based on the findings of a study that investigated the factors that had value in increasing the quality of student interactions in an online graduate education course, Uzuner and Mehta (2007) propose the following strategies for instructors to help them achieve educationally valuable talk (EVT) in their online classes:

1. Generation of class norms by the students: One of the factors that may facilitate the production of EVT in online discussions is having students co-construct a set of guidelines/norms for online discussions which will then be presented to them in all modules as a reminder of class expectations. Having ownership of the norms that govern the course discussions will certainly affect the climate of collaborative learning in an online class by providing an impetus for students to post more constructive and meaningful messages.
2. The employment of Grice’s maxims for self-evaluation: In addition to the student-generated class norms, another factor that may positively affect the nature and characteristics of students’ online posts is the employment of Grice’s maxims by the students to self-evaluate their own posts. Although not specifically referring to online conversations, Grice’s maxims for effective and collaborative conversations include:
   • Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is required.
   • Quality: do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence.
   • Relation: be relevant.
   • Manner: avoid ambiguity and obscurity; be clear, brief, and orderly.
3. Retrospective analysis of posted responses: Asking students to engage in a retrospective analysis a few times during the semester whereby they self-critique and reflect on their performance and comment on their perceptions concerning the quality of their responses may make them revisit their learning and, more important, initiate them into rethinking about their postings to improve their talk quality. In these retrospective analyses, students can be asked to talk about the ways online discussions mediated their learning and reflect upon the quality of their postings, usefulness of their contribution to the overall discussion, and their experience as a collaborator in making meaning of the content.

References
Uzuner, S. (2007). Educationally valuable talk: A new concept for determining the quality of online conversations. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(4), 400–410.

Uzuner, S. & Mehta, R. (2007, August). Aiming for educationally valuable talk in online discussions. Paper presented at the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching—MERLOT Seventh International Conference, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Excerpted from Suggestions for Instructors: 3 Ways to Ensure Educationally Valuable Talk in Online Discussions, Online Classroom, July 2008.

With wikis, you’re able to remove these two obstacles because wiki sites not only make collaboration a breeze, but they contain tracking tools that let instructors see who’s contributing to the project, and when they’re making those contributions.

In the recent online seminar, Designing an Effective Collaborative Wiki Project, Rhonda Ficek, Ph.D., director of instructional technology services at Minnesota State University Moorhead, provided an overview of the different types of wikis, the benefits of using them for group activities, and how to use a rubric to evaluate wiki-based projects.

Characteristics of Wikis
Ease of editing – There’s nothing to download and wikis don’t require any special technical skills. Students edit the documents using their standard web browser. No more having to email documents back and forth.

Revision history – The wiki tracks and stores the date, time and author of any changes. It also stores the older versions of documents, which can be pulled up at any time.

Content management – Wikis allow you to “tag” content and cross-link between pages, as well as create a table of contents to simplify the navigation and presentation of materials.

In the second portion of the seminar, Ficek provided a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up a wiki using WetPaint, including tips on creating template pages, editing content, and monitoring changes or updates.

“Wikis are very effective environment for group collaboration, but you still need to clearly define what you want your students to do, the purpose of the wiki project, and the expected outcomes – just like you would any other project,” says Ficek. “You also want to make sure students understand how they will be assessed.”

Based on my research and experience of having students moderate, I developed the following approach.

I started by developing the following criteria describing how a moderator—whether instructor or student—should behave in an online course based on the literature and what I do in my online courses:

• Focus the discussion on course content and encourage new ideas.
• Initiate further discussion on questions or observations.
• Find unifying threads and communicate them.
• Draw attention to opposing perspectives, different directions, and dissenting opinions.
• Encourage debate.
• Summarize and post your report about the discussion.

To help prepare students to moderate discussions, I explain why they are being asked to do this. Developing leadership skills is an important learning objective for my students, and moderating will help them develop leadership skills and learn a topic more thoroughly. Students select the topics they would like to moderate, which also serves as a motivator.

During the first few weeks of the course, I model how to moderate threaded discussions, and I am always amazed that they pretty much do what I do. For each discussion, students post their weekly assignments to the discussion board. Most of these assignments are designed so that each student’s submission is unique—they all do the same assignment, but each does it in a different context. For example, I teach a course on the World Wide Web and have students investigate use of webquests. Each student selects two webquests to critique, describing how the webquests do or do not address criteria based on assigned readings. Students also write about how they might use webquests in their own classrooms. The students post these assignments to the discussion board so that everyone can see everyone else’s assignments. I make comments, give feedback, ask questions, and write a summary at the end of each discussion.

Students work in pairs when they moderate discussions. They are not required to do the assignments for the unit they moderate, but they are expected to be prepared to lead the discussion on the topic. Each student moderates once per semester, and I have found (based on observation and student surveys) that having students moderate has the following benefits:

• A variety of feedback—Students have told me that they like different types of feedback, it’s like having multiple instructors in the course.
• More conversation—I do notice that often there is more conversation. Students say they feel less inhibited because it’s not Dr. Thormann who’s asking them a question. Although when I moderate the discussion I try to be very open and ask them probing questions, it’s still Dr. Thormann. Several students said that having classmates moderate is less intimidating. One wrote, “It levels the playing field.”
• Students take ownership—Some students mentioned that they like to guide the direction of the discussion so it becomes more their class. It gives them the responsibility to shape the discussion and bring it to where they want it to go.
• Good citizenship—If everyone’s moderating they know that they’re going to be in the same boat at some point. They want to be good citizens so that their classmates will also participate when their turns come.
• Improves communication—Some students have stated that moderating stretches their communication skills, prompts them to be good listeners, and forces them to concentrate more on the discussion.
• Moderators see the big picture—Students have said that they grasp the knowledge of the subject better when they moderate than when doing the ordinary assignments. They get to see the big picture. They get to observe their classmates in a different way.
• Gets students to read all the posts—The hard and sad fact is that not all of my students read every posting except when they moderate. That’s where they get the depth, and my guess is that if they moderate and find it gratifying, they start to read more in subsequent discussions.

Limitations of Having Students Lead Discussion Boards
Having students moderate is not necessarily appropriate for every course, and I don’t use this method in all my online courses. It seems to work best in courses where students are gathering knowledge rather than making knowledge. It just doesn’t work in a thesis course, where students are doing research and making knowledge and things are very individualized. In the thesis course, students are very focused on their own topics.

Even when the course lends itself to this approach, you need to be aware of the following issues that might arise:

• It’s very time consuming.
• Sometimes classmates resent being questioned by another classmate. I had one student who felt very strongly that the teacher should be teaching. In response, I told her that I know a fair amount but not everything.
• If the moderator for a particular assignment isn’t good, the class suffers.

Advice for Student-Led Discussion Boards
Here are some suggestions for helping students moderate effectively:

• Have students moderate in pairs. This can make the process less burdensome for each student, but they may need help making this partnership work. I make suggestions for dividing the work equitably. For example, each partner can be responsible for moderating half of the discussion, or one partner can respond to the initial posting and the other can respond to the follow-up.
• Give them clear instructions.
• Model what you think a good moderator should do.
• Send out reminders a week or so before students are scheduled to moderate. I send the moderators a list of what they need to do to moderate, encourage them to ask me questions about moderating, and let them know that they do not need to do the week’s assignment.
• Give positive feedback. I send feedback via email and sometimes in the announcements section of the course. They need to know that they’ve done a good job.

Joan Thormann is a professor in the Technology in Education Division in the School of Education at Lesley University.

Excerpted from Student Moderators in Online Courses, Online Classroom, March 2008.

Janice Wilson Butler, assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Texas at Brownsville, uses optional synchronous sessions in her online courses to meet the needs of these “hesitant” online learners. Anecdotal evidence suggests that these synchronous sessions help to engage students and improve online student retention.

Butler’s courses are mostly asynchronous, and she doesn’t require students to attend the synchronous sessions because not every student is available to meet synchronously. But the majority of students do attend the synchronous sessions, and these sessions are consistently among the highest rated elements of her courses.

In a typical live session, Butler will share information, ask discussion questions, have students work in private “rooms” within the system to discuss the issue and develop a solution, then come back into the main room and present their findings to their classmates. Sometimes she’ll have a guest presenter, such as a librarian who can demonstrate database searches and answer students’ questions.

Setting the agenda, explaining the benefits
Butler offers the following strategies for effectively utilizing synchronous sessions:

• Provide technology orientation. Butler uses video and text tutorials to help students understand how to use the technology. This increases the students’ comfort level and reduces the number of technology-related questions they ask.
• Schedule synchronous sessions to suit the course. Butler schedules synchronous sessions around the course’s asynchronous activities. On average, Butler conducts synchronous sessions every other week, scheduling them infrequently when students are working independently and more frequently when it’s time to share their work.
• Set an agenda for each synchronous session. At the beginning of the course, students should know at a glance when each synchronous session is scheduled so they can make arrangements to participate. In addition, each session should have a specific agenda so that the discussion stays relevant.
• Limit each synchronous session to one hour. Online learners, particularly working adults, have busy schedules. Keep the synchronous sessions brief and do things in little bursts. “It’s got to be something that you can get in there, do it fast, and then move on. If you are going to show a movie, the upper limit should be eight minutes,” Butler says.
• Establish expectations. Although Butler does not require students to attend synchronous sessions, she expects those in attendance to participate. “I tend to ask lots of questions and call on different people. I tell them, ‘You never know when I’m going to call on you,’” Butler says.
• Create an archive of each session. Most synchronous online learning platforms have the ability to record sessions for future use. This is a great benefit for students who are unable to attend the synchronous event. It also enables students to review materials as needed. Archives of individual group sessions are also helpful in assessing participation.

Butler has not formally studied the effects of using synchronous events in her online courses, but feedback from students and her observations indicate that they do have positive effects.

>Excerpted from Some Students Want Synchronous Learning, Online Classroom, September 2008.

Before the course begins, the instructor should consider the purpose of each discussion, how it relates to the learning objectives, and how it can promote deeper thinking, says Elaine Bennington, director of instructional technology, distance education, and adjunct faculty development at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana.

Here are two key questions to ask when planning a discussion:

• What do I want students to be able to do?
• In what ways do I want students to understand this material?

Answering these questions can help determine the types of questions to ask, says Laurie Kirkner, Internet technician at Ivy Tech.

A course can include different types of online discussions. In addition to an introduction, discussions can be used for reflection, debate, or exploring case studies, among other things. And as a course progresses, the online discussions can help move students to the higher end of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).

Types of questions
The asynchronous nature of the discussion board makes it more important to plan specific questions because it’s not as easy as in a face-to-face class to ask a follow-up question when your initial question fails to elicit the level of dialogue you had hoped for. This is not to say that all questions in online discussions need to be scripted. Another important role for the instructor is to participate in these discussions and help students explore relevant but unplanned discussion topics and to get them back on topic when they stray too far.

Initial questions in an online discussion might ask closed questions, which can help establish a set of principles to build upon. But for the most part, threaded discussions should feature open-ended questions that elicit divergent thinking from the students.

Too often, however, instructors simply ask students to state their independent thinking on a subject and perhaps comment on two classmates’ postings. Bennington and Kirkner recommend using the following six Socratic questioning techniques as delineated by Richard Paul (see reference below) to get students involved in discussions that go beyond simply their opinions:

• Conceptual clarification questions—questions that get students to think about concepts behind their arguments, for example, Why are you saying that? What exactly does this mean? How does this relate to what we have been talking about? Can you give me an example?
• Probing assumptions—questions that get students to think about the beliefs that they base their arguments on, for example, What else could we assume? How did you choose those assumptions? How can you verify or disprove that assumption? What would happen if …?
• Probing rationale, reasons, and evidence—questions that get students to think about the support for their arguments, for example, Why is that happening? How do you know this? Can you give me an example? What do you think causes …? On what authority are you basing your argument?
• Questioning viewpoints and perspectives—questions that get students to consider other viewpoints, for example, What are some alternate ways of looking at this? Who benefits from this? How are x and y similar?
• Probe implications and consequences—questions that get students to think about the what follows from their arguments, for example, Then what would happen? What are the consequences of that assumption?
• Questions about the question—questions that turn the question in on itself, for example, What was the point of asking that question? Why do you think I asked this question?

Discussion board rubrics
Bennington and Kirkner recommend grading online discussions according to a rubric that instructors share with students at the outset of the course that considers the quality and quantity of students’ postings. “These discussion boards have to be a graded situation so that the students will take them seriously,” Bennington says.

There are many online-discussion-grading rubrics out there. Here are two examples:

Discussion board rubric example 1
Discussion board rubric example 2

Reference
Paul, Richard, Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Students for a Rapidly Changing World, 1993.

Adapted from A Plan for Effective Discussion Boards, Online Classroom, May 2007.