How to Create and Sustain Meaningful Discussions in Online

Courses?

Ana-Paula Correia

and Natalya Koehler

Educational Studies Department, The Ohio State University, 29 W Woodruff Ave, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.

International Institute of Innovative Instruction, Franklin University, 236 E Town St, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.

Keywords: Online Discussions, Peer Facilitation, Digital Content Curation.

Abstract: While taking online courses students are required to participate in online discussions. These are often

mandatory activities that count towards the course final grade. Even though, in many occasions, online

students find this requirement dreadful and unproductive. A case study has been conducted with a

postgraduate educational technology online course at a large university in the United States. This course offers

two innovative strategies to overcome this issue and concomitant evidence of effectiveness.

1 INTRODUCTION

Online discussions support students and instructors’

interactions in online learning environments and

promote students’ critical thinking and deep learning.

Studies (e.g., Chenga et al., 2011) indicate that

students who participated in discussions forums show

better performance in online courses. However, many

times students fail in engaging in meaningful

conversations and providing thoughtful and reflective

contributions while participating in online

discussions. Several issues linked to online

discussions have been widely reported. Examples are:

limited participation (Hewitt, 2005); inadequate

critical analysis of ideas (Rourke and Anderson,

2002); lack of motivation, commitment, and time; and

failure to communicate effectively (Brooks and

Jeong, 2006).

The case study described here is an attempt to

address some of the pitfalls mentioned above that

impact most of distance educators and hinder learning

in online courses.

2 THE CASE STUDY

The next paragraphs describe the case study

conducted. It took place in the context of an online

course (Evaluation of Online Learning

Environments) taught at a large university in the

United States as part of a postgraduate program in

educational technology. Data collection occurred

between January and May of 2015. Twenty-three

postgraduate students participated in this study. Ages

ranged from 24 to 51 years old and gender

representation was balanced (13 females versus 10

males) the course. Most of them were part-time

students working in a multitude of related professions

such as, instructional designers, teachers, corporate

trainers and user experience designers.

The course was developed in Blackboard Learn

(http://www.blackboard.com). Blackboard Learn is a

learning management system used by many

universities and colleges in the United States. It is a

web-based server system that includes content and

course management features as well as open

architecture and scalable design to permit integration

with information systems and authentication

protocols. It offers a platform for communication

(e.g., chat, discussion boards and email) and sharing

content (e.g., post articles, assignments and quizzes;

compose text; add videos, still images and audio files;

use a media library; and create a calendar).

Evaluation of Online Learning Environments

(Figure 1) offered opportunities to design, carry out,

and report the results of evaluation or usability

studies, including instrumentation, reliability,

validity and impact. The course was organized around

themes (e.g., The Big Picture of Evaluation;

Formative and Summative Evaluation; Usability

Testing; and Collecting Evaluative Information).

Selected themes called for online discussions. For

example, there were week-long online discussions

300

Correia, A-P. and Koehler, N.

How to Create and Sustain Meaningful Discussions in Online Courses?.

DOI: 10.5220/0006337703000304

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2017) - Volume 2, pages 300-304

ISBN: 978-989-758-240-0

around Formative and Summative Evaluation or

Alternative Evaluation Approaches.

The assignments consisted of an individual

project, a team project and an individual reflection.

Since participation, involvement and leadership in

class were particularly important when learning

online, the course participation made up an important

portion of students’ grade (45 out of 200 points).

Figure 1: Snapshot of Evaluation of Online Learning

Environments offered in Blackboard Learn.

3 PEER FACILITATION OF

ONLINE DISCUSSIONS

Peer facilitation increases participation and fosters

meaningful dialogue and participation in

asynchronous online discussions. Having students

facilitating online discussions on selected topics is

one of the strategies used in this case study.

This practice has been extensively used by the one

of the authors since 2008 (e.g., Baran and Correia,

2009) and stemmed from her interest in investigating

alternative online discussion facilitation strategies

that put the student at the center. Other research

studies have been conducted around this phenomenon

(e.g., Wang, 2008; Hew and Cheung, 2011).

3.1 Peer Facilitation Sustained

In Evaluation of Online Learning Environments

students were randomly assigned to an online

discussion group with 5 to 6 members.

Each group would have a student facilitator who

volunteered to moderate the online discussion.

Students were encouraged the use different media to

express their ideas and insights and take full

advantage of Blackboard media integration features.

This was another innovative aspect of the online

discussions that most of the time tend to be centered

around text-based contributions (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Example of an online discussion introduction by

student-facilitator.

Since the student-facilitators were volunteers a

sign-up form was set up on Blackboard and several

calls were emailed to students and posted on

Blackboard. Following is a summary of the benefits

of being a student-facilitator, which consisted on the

main recruitment effort: Why would you like to be a

moderator?

 Get to know your peers better and learn about

what they do academically, professionally and

in their personal life;

 Learn about others’ perspectives and enrich

your own knowledge and understanding of the

topic;

 Actively interact with others, develop a sense

of connectedness, and collaborate for learning;

 Become a thoughtful, critical and reflective

professional;

 It builds your résumé;

 It gives bonus credit points.

In terms of guidance and support on becoming a

student-facilitator, students were given a list of

guidelines, as follows:

 Set the agenda for the discussion: the

objectives of the discussion, guiding questions

or exercises, scenarios for discussion or

activities on the discussion topic (Figure 2);

 Clarify the purpose: What is the expected

outcome of the discussion?

 Encourage the participation: Create a trustful

atmosphere;

 Guide the discussion by asking questions rather

than speaking up for him or herself;

 Ensure that some participants do not dominate

the conversation by inviting less participative

elements to jump in the discussion;

 Keep the discussion focused on the topic(s);

 Encourage multiple views of the same issue(s);

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 Bring the discussion to an end by summarizing

the main ideas (Figure 3).

Resources on “Moderating Online Discussion”

were offered to all students in class and posted under

“Additional Resources” on Blackboard. A week in

advance of their online discussion facilitation, the

peer facilitators were sent an email as a reminder of

their role as student-facilitator and the expectations

associated to this role. In sum, the course offered a

series of weekly online discussions led exclusively by

and for students.

Figure 3: Example of bringing the discussion to an end by

student-facilitator.

3.2 Effectiveness of Peer Facilitation

The online discussions around the themes discussed

in class generated 844 postings on Blackboard in

addition to 292 postings on the first week

(introductions). As mentioned above, as part of the

course assignments, students had to submit an

individual reflection about their learning experience

in class. Their insights about the online discussions

showed that they considered the discussion prompts

as “thought provoking and allowed for even more

reflection on [their] own thoughts.” They valued how

much they learn from and with their peers. One of the

students wrote:

I found that this learning method was not

only useful in exploring concepts covered in

the reading assignments, but it also was a

great way to get to know other students; it

emulated the experience and benefits of a live

group discussion asynchronously. Because

the students had such varied backgrounds,

their contributions made for interesting

discussions and I enjoyed the varied

experiences provided by different group

discussion moderators. Upon reflection, I not

only learned about concepts covered in

reading assignments and more about my

classmates, but the different ways that

moderators approached the group

discussions was also instructive.

The use of different types of media (e.g., video,

infographics and audio files) to prompt the discussion

and address the issues at hand, was also highly

regarded by the students. One of them explained: “I

used multimedia to support my ideas or shared

multiple information formats with other

classmates…”

The opportunity to become an online discussion

student-facilitator and the experience that came with

it, was considered a significant contribution to

students’ learning. One student commented:

I am so glad I took the opportunity to

moderate a discussion board. I especially

appreciated that moderators were allowed to

truly drive the discussion by coming up with

our own questions versus just shepherding

the group through canned questions. This

extra credit format was another great way to

engage with online classmates and get to

know people. So much of what I learned in

this class was about soft skills, but as a

classmate and as an evaluator. Those

experiences only came with being willing to

“get our hands dirty.”

4 DIGITAL CONTENT

CURATION

Another strategy used in this course to overcome

much of the lack of motivation, commitment and

communication among online learners was the digital

content curation. It provided students and instructor

with an alternative way to participate online that built

on the rise of “share the sharing” culture.

The word “curation” in Latin comes from

“curare,” which means, to take care of or to preserve.

In today’s world curation leads to a re-interpretation

of the use of digital resources. Content curation was

mentioned for the first time in 2009 and 2011 in

Bhargava’s blog. At that time, this concept was more

focused on online marketing than on education. He

defined content curation as: “the act of finding,

grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most

relevant content on a specific issue” (Bhargava, 2011,

para 4). Different from content creation, curation

refers to finding and providing a link to the content

one has already created. Curated content is

meaningful, filtered and directed toward a specific

target or topic. The power of collaborative content

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curation emanates from the fact that it is filtered and

organized by humans in opposition to the many

rating/reviewers’ systems that are machine generated.

4.1 Digital Content Curation

Framework

In this case-study, the focus was on the learner-

curator, meaning postgraduate students enrolled in

Evaluation of Online Learning Environments. A part

of students’ graded course participation consisted on

curating specific theme-related artifacts using

Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/).

Scoop.it is a content curation platform that allows

learners to curate, add their perspective and publish to

their own topic page; share to social channels; embed

in websites; and discover content instantly based on

keywords/tags (Figure 4). Students can upload

relevant digital artifacts, post their insights and react

to their peers’ insights. Keywords/tags can also be

added to the artifacts.

Figure 4: Screenshot of Scoop.it interface.

Students were expected to curate and link their

insights to the course readings and their professional

experiences at least one digital resource related to a

specific theme (e.g., evaluation versus usability;

collecting evaluative information; and politics, ethics

and standards of evaluation). They were also

expected to react to at least two other artifacts curated

by one of their peers and/or instructor. The reactions

to their peers’ insights offered an opportunity to

extend the discussion around the artifact and themes

(Figure 5).

Figure 5: Example of learner-curators’ reactions to their

peers’ insights.

In relation to the different types of artifacts

curated by students, they included:

 illustrations, infographics or any other visual;

 videos;

 articles published in online journals, or

websites, d) websites or blogs;

 applications (e.g. PowerPoint slides, software

applications, and others).

The most common type of artifacts curated

around all themes were websites/blogs followed by

articles and videos. Two resources/tools were also

curated.

4.2 Effectiveness of Digital Content

Curation

A total of 75 digital artifacts were created by the

learner-curators. They contributed with 79 insights

and 121 reactions to their peers’ insights. A content

of analysis of students’ end-of-course reflections

showed that the majority of the students valued their

role as learner-curator. One of the students

mentioned:

Alternating reading and assignments that

required contributing to the Learner‐

Curated Knowledge Base made the course

bright and exciting. [this activity] is a very

powerful tool for engaging students. At first

sight it seemed to me like a simple task … to

share some articles or other sources related

to a particular topic. However, I changed my

mind when I spent more than two hours

finding a good article or informative video to

curate. I went through several articles and

chapters from different textbooks. I watched

many YouTube videos related to the topic. As

a result, I got familiar with the entire topic

How to Create and Sustain Meaningful Discussions in Online Courses?

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and introduced myself to many opinions from

different sources regarding this topic.

Another student emphasized that the learner-

curated knowledge activity in Scoop.it “was a

necessary complement to discussion board in

Blackboard by integrating more multimedia

resources, enriching online interactions, and better

accommodating different learning styles.” A few

students reported that in the beginning it was hard to

work with Scoop.it because of usability and

navigation issues. For example, inserting a tag or

posting a reaction was not easy to accomplish because

of how these functions are offered in Scoop.it.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This case study offers two strategies to create and

sustain meaningful discussions in online courses and

to overcome the challenges of instructor-led

facilitation (e.g., instructor dominated discussion and

limited application to students’ contexts of practice).

They are: peer facilitation and digital content

curation. While case studies cannot assure sampling

representativeness, they may offer important

information to be applied in similar contexts and

situations.

The peer facilitation strategies can be used to

enhance the sense of learning community and

encourage students’ participation in online

discussions. This seems aligned with existing studies

on students as online discussion facilitators (e.g.,

Rourke and Anderson, 2002) that suggested that this

approach is beneficial not only to encourage student

involvement, but also to improve learning outcomes.

Today’s learners have a myriad of content sources

at their disposal for refinement and mash-up. A recent

study investigated how Pinterest

(www.pinterest.com), a content sharing service, was

used by students in a graduate class (Song et al.,

2017). The activity explored the use of language

everyday life. The findings show that the affordances

of Pinterest as an electronic board allowed for on-

going communication with classmates and the

cyberspace represented by other Pinterest users.

“Both images and accompanying messages revealed

pinners' intentions to express their thoughts about

noteworthy language use and to invite their audience

to pay attention to what they had shared.

The Pinterest activity as digital curation created a

participatory culture that encouraged students'

collaboration and informal learning.” (Song et al.,

2017, p.33)

Being able to sort through huge amounts of digital

content compile, scrutinize and recommend it, is as

an important skill as creating content. This study

evidences the effectiveness of digital content curation

to motivate and support online interactions among

students and instructors. Scoop.it’s commenting and

curating features supported information exchange

and learners’ curiosity and willingness to discuss with

their peers.

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Bhargava, R., 2009. The Manifesto for the Content Curator:

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http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2009/09/manifesto-for-

the-content-curator-the-next-big-social-media-job-of-

the-future.html

Bhargava, R., 2011. The 5 Models of Content Curation.

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http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2011/03/the-5-models-

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