My final project for the #OKMOOC involves imagining how the EdX discussion board platform might be redesigned to improve learners access to knowledge.
Please take a moment to share (A) one thing you find helpful about the discussion board, (B) one frustration or challenge, and (C) a suggestion for how this might be accomplished.
Your feedback will not only be helpful to my project, but it may be shared with EdX or others interested in redesigning discussion boards within MOOCs. Thanks in advance for your help!
Hopefully I have interpreted your request properly
A) The discussion board is helpful to those who organize the class in that they can organize discussions according to a timeline. This linear structure allows us to access discussions according to week. B) BUT--once a discussion is in the past, it is swallowed up and if you want to go back to something a participant said and reconsider it, it is hard to do without wading through a bunch of other stuff. In a mooc with so many participants it gets overwhelming. C) I think being able to tag posts and access them through a tag cloud would be helpful
I noticed on the course MIT Edtech Design and Development they`re using a new social discussion site, under beta called ProSolo. They appear to be placing more emphasis on social learning. Personally, I think the discussion boards are a little slow to develop into real discussions, and prefer the fast moving stream, like Twitter, of conversation and links happening in real time.
Great topic--I'm analyzing a different EdX site for a research project, so I've been thinking about this a bit. A) I like how the discussion board can be tiered (can't remember the technical word) so responses are below what they are commenting on (I've used other platforms where everything is in a same-level list and it's impossible to see how conversations develop). I also like that it's possible to "follow" a discussion so you get update emails when someone else comments on a post. Another nice feature is if you go into the discussion board from a link in an instructional module, you see just the posts that are related to that module. B) As Letty noted, what really bugs me is that if you go in through the main link, however, the posts are chronological and completely unrelated. It's impossible to search, so you have to scroll through for pages if you're looking for a specific post. The only way I've been able to even find my own past posts is to post something new and click on my name to get to a list of my previous posts--and EdX only lets me see the most recent 10 or so (older posts can only be found by scrolling through the entire discussion board...). C) I would like to see an improved search capacity, so you can search by keyword, user, or maybe also by course module from where the post was originally created.
Please take a moment to share (A) one thing you find helpful about the discussion board, (B) one frustration or challenge, and (C) a suggestion for how this might be accomplished.
Your feedback will not only be helpful to my project, but it may be shared with EdX or others interested in redesigning discussion boards within MOOCs. Thanks in advance for your help!
A) The discussion board is helpful to those who organize the class in that they can organize discussions according to a timeline. This linear structure allows us to access discussions according to week.
B) BUT--once a discussion is in the past, it is swallowed up and if you want to go back to something a participant said and reconsider it, it is hard to do without wading through a bunch of other stuff. In a mooc with so many participants it gets overwhelming.
C) I think being able to tag posts and access them through a tag cloud would be helpful