Google Plus, Discussions, and Online Learning

Discussions in Google+

I don’t know about you, but I hate discussion boards. No. Seriously. I did a webinar about it once. I think there is this misguided mentality that to criticize online learning particularly while you are teaching online is a no-no. To be fair, I think that a general dismissal of online learning as “not real school” is naive and short sighted, but I also have to say that if we aren’t looking critically at the online classroom (and the traditional one) we aren’t going to improve the medium and deserve the skepticism that we’re getting.

Discussion are rough. I don’t know a lot of online teachers that like them. They feel that they are a necessary component but I don’t know that I have ever had a professor bring up a particularly riveting turn of discussion events from their online class to me. Traditional ones, yes, never online.

Why is that exactly? What is wrong with discussions. There is a lot of pressure out there to fix this by adding “expectations.” Creating a discussion rubric that indicates to students exactly how and what they should be posting will probably give you the types of posts that you want, from every single student. I’m giving you a question that is round, and I want you to make it into a square, paint it green and give it back to me.

Done, and done. And now I have a box of green squares that use to be orange circles. I’m not sure I’ve made a lot of progress. If I want a bunch of homogeneous cookie cutter responses, I’ll ask them to write me an essay.

It comes back to outcomes. What do we want discussions to do? Are we looking for something to fill up the gradebook on a weekly basis or is there something more? And are you getting that something more that you’re looking for? Is it working? Assessment. Not just of them, but of you. When you read discussion responses how do you feel? Obligation or discovery? Predictability or surprise?

I did something this semester that really follows along with a lot of changes I’ve been making. I ditched the discussion rubric. I decided, with the move to google+, to use the change of venue to guide how our discussions would develop. Outside of ANGEL where many of them are engaged in online discussions in other classes, they have a new sort of freedom and it shows in their posts. The respond to one another, they assert strong opinions, they argue with me (which I think is pretty awesome), and they engage.

I have considered adding back in a short set of guidelines but I resist. Life doesn’t have rubrics. I give the students updates on how they are doing. Encourage them to do more. But I refuse to set the bar because that provides them with a bottom line. I don’t want them to have access to the bottom line. I want them to engage until discussing things online feels natural. Until they come back to Google+ because they want to know what everyone else thought about their posts.

There are still problems with posts moving and needing nesting comments (PLEASE PEOPLE) but the payoff is huge. There is more happening in the google plus online discussions than I have ever had in the ANGEL ones. I cannot wait until we can discuss the plays that we see for the class. I’m excited to meet my speech students now that we have been talking to one another so much. There is so much more here that we can do.

Tags: discussion, edtech, google plus, google+, Online Learning