Enhancing Your Courses With Manila Discussions

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Enhancing Your Courses With Manila Discussions

• Presented by Heidi King

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Why Use Discussions?
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Discussion Components

• Also known as bulletin boards
• An asynchronous online tool
• Typically threaded Manila threads differently

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Educational Goals

• What are your goals and which of those can be met
  using online discussions?
• Create more meaningful interactions
• Enable all students to participate (shy,
  reflective thinkers, working students, etc.)
• Encourage growth of a learning community
• Extend classroom boundaries
• What are your goals for your class(es)?

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Professional Goals

• Move to hybrid teaching?
• Move to online teaching?

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Benefits

• Collaboration and group work.
• A good way to manage and collect group work.
• Online resources can be shared quickly and
  easily.
• Cancelled classes can still have meaningful
  online discussions.
• Some students are more comfortable writing than
  speaking.
• Others?

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Which Tool is Best?

• Email vs. Online Discussions
• Better tool depends on the nature of your online
  discussions
• Think of ways you can effectively use the tools
  together.

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Creating Discussions in Manila
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Communication Strategies
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Basic Tips

• Make use the discussions yourself (and email,
  too)
• Use the discussion list regularly
• Assign specific tasks for students
• Make students aware of your posting policies

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Your Online Discussion Policies

• What will the discussions be used for?
• Who will instigate discussions? Will they be
  teacher or student driven?
• How often to you expect students to post?
• How often will you read and respond?
• How will you organize discussions?

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Netiquette

• Be aware of the online culture of your students.
• Will you allow emoticons and acronyms?

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Planning and Preparation

• Encourage students to copy and paste from their
  word processor to the discussions.
• Offer formatting suggestions, such as hyphens and
  asterisks.

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Other Issues

• Symbols and graphics
• Flame wars

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Teaching Strategies
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Setting the Tone

• The tone you take will likely be the one your
  students assume.
• Model effective postings and replies for students
  - post samples.
• Let students know the expectations for response
  time.

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Modeling and Coaching

• Lurk and monitor your discussions
• If your discussions are student-driven, you can
  coach them behind the seens.
• Email students you dont see participating.
• Email students that may not be responding/posting
  appropriately

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What About Group Work?

• Online discussions are a fantastic forum for
  group work.
• Different groups have different discussions.
• Use email to communicate and form a group
  response to discussion questions.

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Designing Effective Groups

• Survey the class to find out their skill level.
• Aim for 3-5 students
• Place a technology savvy person in each group
• Decide what to do about flakes
• Allow groups to set own policies

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Grading and Assessment

• Do you want to grade on quality or quantity or
  both?
• Do you want to grade at all?
• In Manila, consider
• A simple grading approach OR
• Group posts OR
• Letting students decide which posts you grade.

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Managing Assignments

• Start small
• Think of one discussion activity that would work
  well in one of your classes.
• Build on what you know
• Once you have one or two online discussions
  running smoothly, add more to one class.
• Explore multiple class discussions
• Consider extensive online group work

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Writing Effective Assignments

• Be very clear about your objectives and
  expectations
• State a clear due date
• Make sure students have access
• Refer students to examples
• Use headers and spacing in the body of your
  assignment
• Highlight key points.

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Create an Assignment