iFacilitate

“rewire the way people spread and consume information.” The point of that epic rewiring job is to facilitate sharing

Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors

Benefits of Online Discussions

Integrating Online Discussions into Your Course

In electronic environments, responses to ideas and texts are dialogic rather than solitary and foster ongoing written conversations among readings and readers. These guidelines should be adapted to course content, design, and emphasis, as well as to the type of electronic communication (email list, discussion board, or Weblog, for instance).

Facilitation: Is largely around helping people connect, share, and learn together; disrupting the walls that keep them apart, understanding the purpose behind their interactions and assisting them achieve this in the longer term.

Moderation:

When issues arise, ‘moderation’ is the set of communications and processes thing that deals with them.

Conversation and community is disparate and distant, and that’s just the “locationless” web. Think about when we add location-based products like Foursquare and Facebook Places. Suddenly, community is a tricky beast indeed. That said, let’s talk about what should come from the future of community.

1. You become a better researcher

2. You become less pushy and more helpful

4. You get your ideas in order

1. Invite, don’t tell.

2. Speak the purpose clearly up front

3. Describe as little as you have to to get the instructions across.

My teaching goals: I want to create the conditions for the class as a whole to make something magical happen. I want students to take away from this course all the learning outcomes I explicitly describe, but I also want to achieve much more: I want to awaken those who have been lulled to semislumber by so many years of desks arrayed in rows and “will this be on the test?” — I want to awaken them to their own powers to use online tools and their thinking skills to not only cope, but to thrive in a world that requires continuous learning. I want to grow more aware along with my students. I want to model and facilitate exploration of and reflection about the impacts of our own media practices. I want to induce student teams to outdo each other in coming up with fun, thought-provoking, incisive, profound, ways to engage with the texts and ideas. I want to inspire so much interest in social media that students read all the required texts and even some of the recommended texts.