By Lisa, on November 27th, 2011%
This question goes way back to the first online class I ever saw demonstrated. The instructor, instead of using our one and only technology (Webboard) as a separate discussion, had embedded her lecture and instructions into the lead post for each week. And at the time (1998) I thought, “oh wow! the whole class is inside the discussion! This is great.”.
But I didn’t do it. Blackboard encourages you to put the discussion board in separate area, and even now that you can make a separate discussion forum for each unit, people still put discussion all together as one course menu item. In Moodle, I have a separate, nested discussion board (simple format) for each week/topic.
In my struggle to determine whether it’s a good idea to switch from forum post/reply to blog/comment format for clases with students, I have assumed that I would continue to integrate discussion as I do now, by week. But in my post about using One Blog, Brandon Davis-Shannon commented on his own difficulties with the format, and noted greater depth in the Blackboard forum than on blogs with comments. It occurred to me this might be because if the whole thing was together, students would feel less awkward posting on a previous topic.
But we all acknowledge it depends on how it’s designed, and what (pedagogically speaking) we’re looking for.
So I created a Google Doc and invited Brandon to help create a chart showing some of the options, and here’s what we’ve done so far:
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One big forum |
Weekly/topical forums |
One big blog |
Individual blogs |
| Advantages |
- May reward students posting on previous topics, deepening conversation, especially if design of the discussion encourages them to do so
- Easy to use
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- Ties discussion to one topic, prevents tangents
- Organizes posts and replies easily
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- Combines course info and activities in one place
- Easy to track student activity
- Easy for students to keep up with peers’ work
- Requires a single log-in to participate
- Possible feeling of collective student ownership of class blog.
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- Student ownership of their own learning space
- Acquisition of some “just in time” technical skills within the context of actual use
- Aggregating blogs can pull whole class together
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| Disadvantages |
- Artificially separates discussion and interactivity from the presented or informational content of the class
- May overwhelm students with number of topics, as class continues.
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- Format doesn’t encourage students to go back to a previous topic, leading to a more superficial discussion.
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- Student ownership is not individual
- Format may lead student posts to be lost in the shuffle
- Blog may disappear if instructor takes it down, loses account, etc[a].
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- Unless commenting takes place on an aggregated blog (thus removing ownership advantage), the inconvenience of commenting on different blogs may be a problem
- Diffuses the conversation too much
- Discourages return to previous topics because of the nature of blog posting
- Tends to require multiple log-ins to participate in commenting unless single system use (for example, Discus)
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| Pedagogy |
May be best suited for:
- classes where themes run throughout
- assignments that allow students to participate in several topics at once
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
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May be best suited for:
- topics that need to be separate
- assignments where everyone has a similar task, such as posting a particular link
- classes where topics have a definite progression or need to move on
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
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May be best suited for:
- keeping the class at one main website or page
- having students experience creation of one artifact with individual contributions
- pedagogies emphasizing collective development of the class
- situations where individual blogs may be of concern for any reason
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May be best suited for:
- student ownership of their work
- pedagogies that encourage student exploration and development of their own topics or focus
- if the instructor has a blog also and content is aggregated, embeds instructor’s content into class
- a course with centralized complementary activities
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| Variations |
- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
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- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
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Theme (Layout?) |
Theme (Layout?) |
Maybe this can help us make decisions on which discussion format is best for a particular class.
By Lisa, on October 27th, 2011%
I have now been a student in three separate classes where I ran my own blog to do the class assignments (CCK08, EC&I831 and ds106). My classes for students are all designed with an LMS-based forum, within which outcomes have been achieved well thus far (I implemented the basic format in 2009).
So now, as I consider departing from an LMS for at least one of my classes for spring, the question is: should I have each student create his/her own blog, then aggregate them, and have them comment on each others’ blogs for discussion? That’s been the model in all three classes I’ve taken, and is the model for Pedagogy First!, where we’ve been using 90 individual blogs for the POT Certificate Class, aggregated to one central website.
But is this the best way for my own classes?
In a more typical online class, discussion takes place in a forum. This keeps things focused and in one place. People are used to forums. All the classes I’ve seen with distributed activities instead of forums have students begging for a forum, whether it’s a threaded forum in an LMS, a Google group, or a Ning. People want a central place to talk, and an aggregated blog made of up all their disparate posts can become just an information center, not a coffee house.
My brilliant colleague Jim Sullivan teaches English composition using a class blog. Students are all authors on it, and they blog there, not on their own blogs. We’ve discussed this many times, and I’ve rejected it because students don’t control their own space. I think they should, but I’m aware that the idea of helping hundreds of students with their technical problems has been a major hurdle to moving ahead. Now it occurs to me that Jim’s approach may be the pedagogically middle ground rather than just easier and more convenient for me (I like pedagogical middle grounds).
A traditional forum in an LMS is set in its pattern and closed in its format (once the class is over, you usually can’t access it). Having everyone create their own blog lets students have their own permanent space, but really doesn’t encourage discussion (as I’ve discovered running Pedagogy First!). Is the One Blog approach the middle ground?
 Is it open and available?
It can be open and as loose as I want, and since I run my own WordPress I can promise it will stay open (Jim runs his own Typepad).
Is there a sense of student ownership?
While students don’t run their own space, students may feel that the One Blog is their space collectively, rather than individually (a classroom they can help create). This could subconsciously create a feeling of community.
Does it provide a good place for discussion?
Yes — not as much as a traditional forum, but more than individual blogs, because it is in one place and everyone is signed in just once, rather than being a guest on other people’s blogs. Plus, WordPress comments are nested. I have searched long and hard and have been unable to find forum software that is free, nests the comments so you can see which comments reply to which, and will tolerate multimedia.
Isn’t Ning a middle ground?
Ning is a social networking platform, a damned good one (nested! multimedia!), but to use it for free you have to advertise for Pearson. That isn’t middle ground — if there’s any advertising in my class at all (and I think there shouldn’t be) it should be incidental, not deliberate and appearing as if I am a spokesperson sponsoring a product (in many ways, this includes Blackboard and Moodle). And I don’t have time right now to figure out how to use an open source social networking platform (such as Oxwall) on my own service.
Although until now I’ve only used blogging for class as a student, I do use the blog platforms for my History 103 and History 104 at San Elijo. They’re not actually blogging on these (in terms of reflection or graded items), but rather posting theses for papers they turn in, and working together to create collections for class presentations. I could start by expanding this set-up into the One Blog format.
Sooooo…..
what am I not thinking of here as I make this decision?
By Lisa, on September 19th, 2011%
Over the last few years of developing a technique I’m happy with in discussion forums (see Discussion Goodness from 2009), I’ve also been experimenting with something similar in the classroom at San Elijo. I’ve done it for three semesters now, and I’m happy with it too.
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| Image by permission and copyrighted Lisa M Lane 2011 |
The idea is that every two weeks, we have “Lab Day”. On that day, everyone who has a laptop has to bring one (a smartphone is OK, just not as good for searching images), and Media Services brings me a batch of old clunker PCs without batteries for everyone else. There are cords all over the floor, and students arranged in small groups.
The task, during our 75 minute class, is to create a collection of three primary sources related to that week’s era, then develop athesis and present it to the class with the evidence. All work is posted on the class website.
Students search the web for primary sources related to, say, the French Revolution. They have to be sure that they really are primary sources (not a drawing of a guillotine from 1947), and the sources can be visual or textual (I usually prefer visual). They post them with citations and create a thesis for which their sources are evidence.
The class website (here’s the one from last spring) is on a WordPress platform, and the students have basic accounts. During the semester, they work on the website in two ways: by posting their homework thesis every Monday (after reading the textbook chapter) and by creating these source collections on Lab Day. I use several plugins to make it easy for students to post the media they find (mostly plugins that create a toolbar for a comment, since they’re all posting as comments). My student Nick asked me to add a “Like” button so they could rate each others’ theses, so I did that too.
Each group has their own space to work (these are Categories in WordPress), and they use comments so that all their sources appear on the same page.
At the beginning of the semester, each group just collects three sources, and talks about how they related to each other at the end of the period. Since it’s early, I often create topics for them (i.e. “find portrait paintings from the 18th century” for Group 1, and “find examples of residential architecture during the Enlightenment” for Group 2). But as the class progresses, we move from more factual discussions of sources into interpretations and theses. Near the end of the semester, they are able to analyze the sources to say something meaningful as a historical theme, with examples from many eras.
Near the end of the period, the group s present (I let them decide if they want a spokesperson or the whole group to come up — interestingly, about 80% of the time the entire group stands up front together). We have a projector that shows the website on the front screen s they present. Again, after the first time (when things are very new and strange), six groups of students can manage all this during one class period.
What’s interesting is that, as with my online classes, the students have some freedom to select the sources they want, so the focus of the presentation often reflects the interest of group members. As we get into broader theses, some groups develop a “specialty area” (say, war propaganda or women’s fashions). I also notice that there are hardly any absences on Lab Day! Students from home log in with TinyChat to talk to their group and participate because they don’t want to miss it. This is even though Lab Day is not graded directly, but rather just counts as part of Contribution.
The benefits of the exercise are several. The main one is affective: students enjoy working in groups and finding things on the internet, and they like having a self-contained class session where everything is immediate. Another benefit is that they get comfortable presenting early on – sharing becomes second-nature instead of something scary. They also get practice with the central historical skills (also our Student Learning Outcomes) of identifying primary sources, developing a historical thesis, and using the evidence to support the thesis. And they do it an environment that is quickly seen as non-threatening (I evaluate sometimes, we have peer evaluations sometimes, and sometimes we just do what we do). I can also provide in-person help as I walk around, with the website, with finding sources, with identifying sources, with whatever.
The drawbacks? I can’t really think of any, except when the network goes down or the technology gets funky. Or when there aren’t enough devices. But, in an emergency, we can do something similar with images from our textbook, or from collections I can bring up on the screen. It’s just not as cool that way.
By Lisa, on September 12th, 2011%
We don’t have a forum at our POT Certificate Class SMOOC (Small-to-Medium Open Online Class). Nor a Google Group (though that’s been suggested and may appear), nor a Moodle forum, nor a Ning.
When I took EC&I 831 from Alec Couros last fall, I felt we needed a forum, and he and I looked for one we liked, but nothing we found had the particular combination we wanted (no ads, free, nested comments and the ability to post multimedia), so we gave it up. On his current page for this semester, he’s listed many types of communication, but not a forum.
And now I notice that the Change MOOC, co-hosted by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier, has a forum, but it’s kinda awkward. Not like a full-featured thing at all. On the main page, there are three Participating links for blogs, two for the newsletter, one for the backchannel, and one for threads. The class starts tomorrow and there are three posts for a class of hundreds.
And yet, all my college history classes feature forums as the heart of the action. I couldn’t do without them.
So why no forums for these classes? I think because the idea of distributed communication has become something we’re all taking seriously.
If we’re going to focus on the wonders of learning on the web as our topic, it makes sense that our participants should be communicating there rather than in a central location. We not only want them communicating via blogs, wikis and Facebook, but we also want them creating their own places and spaces (which is why the potcert11 class may yet have a Google Group, because the participants may be creating it — and they’re starting the Twitter thing, not me).
I also think there’s more staying power to a distributed community. If you have one space, as we all know from using learning management systems, the course seems finite. Even if the space is available after the class is over, the feeling is still that the class is over. But if the conversation is distributed (our class has a very active Facebook group, which surprised the heck out me), there’s a feeling of perpetuity. The river continues and you step in and out when you wish.
As Rick Schwier has noted, informal communities have higher levels of engagement over time. I wonder whether de-emphasizing a formal location for conversation makes these classes lean more toward informal learning, even though they are organized as classes, with set timeframes.
So come on, hit me with the research. Do distributed communities last longer? Are we right to “force” them instead of offering a rich place for a single discussion?
By Lisa, on June 27th, 2011%
Although I haven’t taught summer in two decades, I am doing it now – an 8-week, 3 unit class in Western Civ, online. That’s double-speed, so I’ve gotten rid of the textbook (and instead spent hours writing multiple-choice questions on my lectures to check content retention) and am heavily relying on my two-step discussion forum technique for students to find their own sources and practice historical skills.
During the regular semester, I have at least 200 students (40 for each of 5 class sections) over 16 weeks. That’s too many for me to do as much individual feedback as I would like, so I’ve developed various methods for giving group feedback that’s valuable, and limited individual feedback to essay questions on exams and answers to their questions in the forums.
Here we are compressed, so the content has been combined. But the forum technique is the same. Each week they must post a primary source related to the (now twice as long) historical era by Wednesday. Then I come in on Thursday to guide the discussion, then they create a historical thesis mini-essay by Sunday.
During a regular semester, this wasn’t really an essay – it was just a thesis and brief outline, and it wasn’t graded separately, but as a part of the general Contribution grade. Then they would write a “real” essay in a private quiz, and I would grade it.
In order to reduce workload for summer, I am having them post a full essay each week by Sunday, and am grading it as if it were the quiz essay, right there in the forum. Here have been the considerations.
1. How to grade them
I am using Moodle, and created a scale like this for forum ratings (the “lowest grade” setting is to force Moodle to start the points at 50% instead of 0):
The idea was that on Monday, I’d just go down the essay posts and grade them, but…
 2. Public or private?
On the first forum, which didn’t count for points, I graded them openly, so that everyone could see everyone’s ratings (it only shows the qualitative comment, not the number of points). I asked in the Facebook group if they liked this, and several students said they didn’t mind, but there weren’t enough students to tell what they all wanted. So for the next two forums, I’ve kept them closed – students can only see their own ratings.
3. Revision
The first week of grading, I noticed that some mini-essays could have gotten a higher score if they’d had some feedback. When students left feedback, it was often really helpful, but there was not mechanism for revision. During the regular semester, I can’t really do this, come back to an assignment twice to grade and regrade, but why not, with only 40 students?
So that’s what’s happening. They submit their mini-essay, then I ask them to comment on each others’ (which they are supposed to do anyway), and I comment on them too, then they can post again with “REVISED” in the subject line, and I grade that one instead.
I started getting confused – had I graded this one already? So I reset the Forum preference to just show the Maximum rating. That way, if I grade a mini-essay twice by mistake, the student will only get the highest score.
 It’s remarkable to me what a difference this is making in their grades and how much work they are putting into the class!
The level of emotional connection in this class is not high (these are mostly university students just trying to get through – they rejected my offer for a synchronous session to talk to me), but the amount of learning is increased anyway.
So two lessons from this:
1. With lower class size, the opportunity for individual feedback, and thus student success, is much higher.
2. An emotional, “friend”, “like” connection between instructor and students, or among students, is not as important in learning a skill as how much work is put into the learning
By Lisa, on May 25th, 2011%
All the student learning outcomes and objectives for my History classes come down to this: the ability to create a historical thesis and defend it by using primary sources. Without these skills, students just aren’t doing history.
The past couple of years I have revamped my courses so they focus on these skills, practiced over and over. Students do it in a constructivist way in the forums, where they post their choice of primary sources and create theses from them each week. They are assessed both as a group and later as individuals on quiz essays.
Whenever I make a change in a course, I track it carefully over time. I have seen the problems I expected to see, and have made tutorials, FAQs and feedback (both group and individual) to answer the issues: using a primary source instead of the textbook, finding primary sources, translating the skill from discussion forum to quiz essay. Citing the sources seemed to be a particular problem last semester.
So all this semester I provided resources and feedback about how to cite a photo or other visual primary source. But this obstacle is proving much more difficult. On the final exams, even when they use primary sources, they don’t cite them properly.
No, before you get out those style sheets, it’s not a problem of MLA or parenthetical citations. The problem is that they are citing each other.
Whichever student posts a source in a forum becomes the origin of the source.
 Here’s an example. Megan posts an image of Jane Addams with children at Hull House. The correct citation would be something like:
Photographer unknown, “Jane Addams with a group of immigrant children” (1889), State Historical Society of Wisconsin, found at http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/photos/html/1130.html.
Another student is writing a post or essay, and wants to use the photo. Instead of citing it correctly, he writes “Megan’s photo of Jane Addams” as the citation.
This isn’t an occasional thing. It’s been a consistent issue this whole year.
It happens even when they’re told not to do it, and shown many examples, and I model proper citation in my own posts. And I wonder whether it’s bigger than not following instructions.
Doesn’t social networking change the definition of a “source”? Your “friends” are now a source of information, and the trail by which they got it is often convoluted, and comes through other friends.
I think it’s because of how they share information that students won’t cite the photographer, artist, or author, or think it’s important to find out who it is. It’s easier to cite Jeff’s post, Jessica’s image, Joshua’s web site. And it makes more sense. After all, it was Jeff/Jessica/Joshua who went to all the trouble to find the source and post it for everyone to use. Why shouldn’t they get the credit?
Am I on to something? Or should I just be rounding up the usual suspects (not following instructions, being unprepared, not reading the feedback, etc)?
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