Necessity is the mother of invention, and the past two years have necessitated that we get a lot smarter about what works in online learning.
Based on a growing body of research suggesting that social learning is critical to the success of online education, colleges and universities have added all sorts of elements to remote courses — everything from Slack channels to Facebook groups to Zoom check-ins.
It’s great to see online education shift its focus toward building a social presence and helping students feel connected to a broader college community. But one thing hasn’t changed: the old-fashioned discussion forum — and that’s a huge problem.
Compared to the online social experiences that students engage in daily, most class-based discussion forums are ineffective, poorly designed and actively counterproductive. Rather than sparking curiosity and motivation, they’re turning students into head-nodding automatons, like something out of Martin Scorcese’s “Hugo” but without the fantasy elements and sublime visual effects.
Online discussion forums persist in college courses because they’re easy. They’re baked into every learning management system. They’re familiar to students and professors. They’re a simple way to personalize a large class. And because so many college classes are virtual, online forums are the only way to have any sort of student interaction in a virtual academic space.
Off campus, it’s not hard to find worthwhile online discussion forums. Reddit, for all its faults, remains one of the 10 most visited websites in the United States because people enjoy talking with internet strangers about games, music, headlines and their pets. Online bulletin boards and virtual communities are vibrant parts of the college sports and video gaming experiences. The GitHub and Stack Overflow communities have brought together millions of software developers worldwide. In many places, online forums promote cleverness and critical thought, cultivate unique perspectives and offer a venue where people can challenge and be challenged on what’s posted.
In too many college courses, however, online discussion forums are perfunctory. Forum posts are often uninspiring because they’re done to hit a weekly quota. The discussions are dull. (“I agree” isn’t much of a response.) And the sheer number of forum posts can be staggering. If everyone in a class of 200 students produces the required two posts per week, even the best-intentioned professor will be quickly overwhelmed. Now multiply that by an entire semester, and it’s no wonder that busy instructors don’t have time to grade students in a thoughtful way on the thrust of their arguments or the cogency of replies that go beyond “I agree.” Instead of inspiring curiosity and critical thinking, these online forums are cultivating in students distaste and disinterest in the idea of discussion at all.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Online discussion forums can and should be a vital piece of all online classes, no matter how big.
Colleges are expected to turn out graduates who can write and think critically — attributes that students can develop through robust online discussion. College instructors also think these class-based online conversations are a good tool. A recent survey from Packback, a platform that builds online discussion forums, found that a large majority of college faculty said technology that supports student community in their courses is very important not just now during the pandemic but into the future.
So what can be done? Here are three things colleges and faculty can try to build strong online discussion communities that don’t turn their students into robots:
Ask engaging questions. Students and instructors alike should prioritize open-ended forum topics that promote inquiry-based learning. Student responses also should include questions to keep discussions going. Students are curious by nature, and they want to engage with one another. Having them answer and ask questions online — in short, designing questions that help students learn “how to think” rather than “what to think” — will push them to explore class material in more depth.
Spark debate. The best way to get students to marshal facts and assemble strong arguments is to have them engage with different points of view. It’s OK to respectfully say “I disagree,” but make sure students explain in some detail with data and evidence why they believe their argument is stronger. Entertaining multiple perspectives is, of course, a core part of critical thinking — which has long been one of the most in-demand skills among employers.
Automate the process. Artificial intelligence has gotten sophisticated enough to grade and provide real-time feedback on discussion posts. Packback, for instance, takes it up a notch by offering a so-called “curiosity score,” which provides immediate feedback that incentivizes students to write well-articulated and well-supported responses to forum posts. In an online forum, AI can be an instructor’s best digital friend.
Online discussions shouldn’t be useless to students, meaningless for instructors and a graveyard where half-baked discussion topics go to die. With some simple practices and the support of emerging technology, it’s possible today to build a much better online discussion experience that students will respond to positively not because they’re programmed to do so but because they genuinely want to.
Dr. Andy Shean is the Chief Learning Officer at Penn Foster College.