"Using the discussion board to build community in online classes": In the online journal EDUCAUSE, William J. Allen of Arkansas State University described his use of the discussion board in his online classes. Dr. Allen begins every semester by informing his students of the participation guidelines for the class, in which he states that students will receive a grade every week for their posts in the discussion forum, "For each discussion topic that I post you will receive three grades, 0-5". He then goes on to outline how he assigns the discussion grade. The three grades are composed of the timeliness of the student post, the substance of the post, and lastly participation. Dr. Allen has found that although the first few weeks of the discussion posts are typically rather "mechanical", as long as he resists the temptation to overly-direct the student discourse, the discussion forum "takes on its own life". Please visit Dr. Allen's blog post to read more: "Using the discussion board to build community in online classes", March 9, 2006.I highly recommend that faculty who intend to use the discussion forum in D2L, place a clause in the syllabus about your expectations for student participation in the discussion forum. Also, consider incorporating discussion board posts into the formal class grade.
An Alternative to D2L's Discussion Board:
If you are adventurous and want to try an alternative to D2L's online discussion forum, another option could be Piazza. Let us know what you think!
Piazza looks much better to me than the D2L forums, based on a quick comparison, and lots of experience with the fantastic StackExchange question/answer sites. Can D2L let the instructor mark the "right answer"? Piazza's approach seems like it will reduce the clutter of many unrated answers, and seems popular.
ReplyDeleteCan we get Piazza integrated with d2l for rosters, and if possible grading also?
For Fall 2012, I already see these CU courses listed at piazza, though it isn't clear if they are all initiated by the instructors.
CSCI 6302: Speech Recognition and Synthesis
CHEN 3320: Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics 1 Enrolled
7000: CSCI 7000 - Data Center Scale Computing
CSCI 7000-010: Technical Advances in Human-Centered Computing
PHIL 3140: Environmental Ethics
CSCI 3155: Principles of Programming Languages
CSCI 4555/5525 AND ECEN 4553/5523: Compiler Construction
CSCI 4753: Performance Analysis
CSCI 5417: Information Retrieval Systems
CSCI 7900: Readings in Programming Languages
CSCI4753-S12: Performance Analysis
LINGUISTICS: Hindi Propbank
Hi Neal,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Piazza appears to offer the instructor more control on filtering/organizing content in the discussion board format. I am guessing that we would have a hard time getting Piazza integrated with D2L simply because D2L already has a functioning discussion forum; however, I would love it if Cont Ed faculty wanted to try it out with their hybrid outside of D2L.