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Students hate discussion boards and mostly feel like they don't get anything out of them. They go into check box mode and real dialogue is lost. How can we fix them?

I used discussion board for 2 full semesters. I received feedback from my students in both ways: course reflection and my performance evaluation. The feedback was very positive. The assignment for the discussion boards would include an actual company with specific operations (inventory, quality, process design, etc.). Students were free to answer any questions and required provide a feedback to at least one of the classmates answer. Students felt connected to their classmates, shared different views, had an opportunity to learn from each other.

The title is a bit misleading but some of the recommendations discussed can definitely spark some life into DBs. DBs are a good way to foster engagement but unless properly done can mostly be seen by students as a one and done exercise.

Apparently there is no such thing as too much participation in online discussions. Participation in discussions (as measured by words posted) scales linearly with grade on test.

I love this publication on how to facilitate a discussion board. It is easy to read and just has a TON of tidbits on how do run a good discussion board in your online class. I refer to it often. It is a little old, so as I recall, there might be a few links within the document that are broken, but there is a lot of content, so you won't miss it probably.

Thanks for sharing this Christina, Working on facilitating a discussion next week and I found it helpful.

One of the most frequently asked questions from veteran and novice online faculty alike is, "How many weekly discussion posts should I contribute?" The reality is, there is an intricate balancing act to achieve the coveted "guide on the side" role in discussion forum facilitation.

Abstract: As more and more instructors enter the world of online teaching and learning, a body of knowledge is emerging around the challenge of facilitating online interaction and fostering online collaboration. This paper draws from the literature on asynchronous learning and the authors' own experiences with online discussion and collaborative online projects. We identify a variety of techniques for focusing student dialogue, fostering an online learning community, and promoting successful collaboration. Instructors who are teaching wholly online courses or simply integrating online components into face-to-face classes will benefit from the observations and discussion.

This is a great article on Edutopia. It contains good practical ideas on how to use an online course's discussion forum.

Best practices, strategies and tips for successfully facilitating online discussion boards.

I'm enrolled as a student in the MOOC Saving Schools Mini-Course 1: History and Politics of U.S. Education on the edX platform and share in this post discussion questions used for assignment purposes from the course to illustrate what NOT to do when it comes to writing discussion questions.

The image used in this post is of a small group of students sitting in a room together, (seemingly) energetically talking about the issues at hand. This is an example of synchronous discussion-the students are in the same room, ostensibly discussing the same topic (the caption says they are "debating search engine liability," which sounds really interesting to me, at least).

Article about private journal entries rather than standard discussion forums

I found this to an interesting and useful technique, which I plan to use going forward. Paul

A scholarly article on online collaborative discussion size

How to integrate technology into the classroom: PowerPoint, Blackboard, Video, iclickers, online discussions, ePortfolios, blended learning, survey tools, etc.

This tool helps a teacher track who participates in classroom discussions (i.e. how often, how long....)

The author's ABCs are: Acknowledge, Build, and Conclude. Good tips based on 17 years of OL teaching!

Several articles in this e learning industry post. Many good tips for discussions and how to make them effective for everyone,

Technology Students are emboldened, but they can also hijack discussions Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels.

Technology Students are emboldened, but they can also hijack discussions Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels.

Technology Students are emboldened, but they can also hijack discussions Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels.

With the advance of web 2.0 technologies, there emerged a wide range of educational tools that we can use with our students in and outside the classroom.Collaborative web tools is one example. Using such websites, teachers will be able to help in holding online and real-time discussions with their students, help them in their projects and assignments, guide their learning, do back-channeling, and synchronously moderate discussion threads and many more. We have prepared for you a list of such tools that you can use with your students, check it and share with us what you think about it.

This article discusses some statistics of social networking use and how users can get scammed or information stolen through clicking on headers or sharing too much personal data.

Collaborative Video Annotations and Discussions (Craig Howard, IU)

#TT1251 Example of Interactive, Collaborative Video

The article discusses the paradigm shift in learning styles and approaches using the web resources. Personal learning environments and internet sifting for content is discussed as well.

The faculty at my college have been discussing this current article that discusses how "at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years." To read Part 2 of the article copy and paste this link into the URL: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Perfect-Storm-in/126969/