Online Discussion Platform
The online discussion platform, also known by various other names such as an online discussion board, online discussion groups, or message boards online, is a term for any digital communication forum where you can leave messages and expect to see responses to your messages. For instructors, the discussion board serves as an asynchronous online learning activity, and online discussion groups are common in fully online, blended or hybrid courses.
The online discussion platform allows course participants to collaborate with others at their convenience by posting thoughts, comments or reactions and answering questions — all of which happens outside of a physical classroom.
Lively and creative discussion board ideas, as well as additional student-to-student and small-group collaboration are some of the hallmarks of face-to-face courses. But when it comes to learning online, some argue it’s difficult to replicate the value of these interactions.
While a staple of strictly online courses for years, the online discussion platform — just one of the many tools for online education — is finally finding traction in both traditional and blended courses — leveraged as collaboration activities for students online that work to reinforce course concepts and engage students in deeper reflection outside the classroom.
These online discussion apps are proving to be a powerful tool. It fosters a sense of community and encourages student-to-student interaction, which research demonstrates improves learner engagement and achievement. Discussion boards for students give all learners the opportunity to expand and clarify their understanding of key ideas. It moves beyond the passive learning forms of reading and listening and allows the learner to actively engage with their peers and instructor.
Types of Online Discussion Forums
A powerful tool for fueling meaningful interaction outside of the classroom, an online discussion platform can come in a few different types of forums. Free online forum sites can be used to create a message board, but with very little oversight and protections for students. Other types of online discussion forums include capabilities nestled within learning management systems.
However, from a usability and visual design standpoint, the way an LMS presents online discussions is challenging and un-engaging. Text-heavy threads and conversations are tough to follow, and the LMS itself doesn’t do a great job of pushing students toward being better collaborators nor instructors toward being better facilitators. So while the origin of the online discussion forum for students in learning management systems — an institution’s centralized course management system — makes sense and they’re essential for supporting teaching & learning, they are hard pressed to do it all.
Then, there is an online discussion platform that can be used to build the kind of student engagement that leads to improved learning outcomes. In fact, new research shows that participation in these types of forums is related to better course outcomes in both traditional courses and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
In a recent pilot study conducted by WGU Labs, the College Innovation Network (CIN) found strong promise for increased course engagement and improved learning outcomes at Piedmont Community College, when different online discussion tools were used both in the classroom and asynchronously. These tools allowed instructors to pull on a broader set of discussion techniques to increase student-to-instructor and student-to-student interactions. Based on that study, we’ll next share examples of how to improve online discussion forums and examples of online discussion forums that increase student engagement.
Examples of Online Discussion Forums
Examples of online discussion forums that entice student participation include many of the following components.
Open-Ended, Real-World Prompts
The opposite of right or wrong discussion prompts, thoughtful discussion questions are one of the most important factors in creating an engaging discussion board. Craft questions that give students the opportunity to form opinions, build on each other’s insights, as well as provide opportunity for dialogue and debate. For example, Copiah-Lincoln Community College has found success in using emotion-based and real-world applicable discussion prompts that speak to their students.
Copiah-Lincoln uses prompts that reference current events and social justice issues to elicit response from even the shyest of students. They find that emotion-based responses come out naturally in the discussions. This approach gives students a safe space to articulate opinions, understand competing perspectives, and compose thoughtful responses — similar to a classroom setting. It’s also good practice for figuring out how to resolve conflict.
Set Expectations and Guide Student Interactions
Be clear in communicating expectations around online forums for students. Outline your approach to online discussions in the course syllabus, and continue to reiterate it through course announcements. Make sure that students understand how much participation is expected of them, how their discussion work will be evaluated, and what constitutes high-quality posts.
One of the most effective ways to set expectations and provide clear guidance is through the use of multiple due dates or milestones. With milestones, instructors can specify a number of posts by a certain date as well as additional responses and reactions by another date. This guides students through discussions and keeps them on track, while simultaneously spurring ongoing interactions.
Milestones can also prompt students to revisit discussions, to see who responded to their posts, and to keep the conversation going — preventing the onslaught of rushed, last-minute posts for instructors to sift through.
Expand the Ways Students Can Respond
Another way for how to make online discussions more engaging is to expand how students can respond. When you consider that many of today’s students say they learn by doing, and 80% of today’s teens use YouTube and video to learn something new or improve skills that will help them prepare for the future, it’s a no-brainer that incorporating multimedia will better engage students.
In fact, West Virginia University experienced an increase in organic interaction among students in their online discussions when they expanded the ways in which students could express themselves.
“Students were submitting written responses, creating snippets of audio, making and sending videos, annotating others videos, as well as launching or responding to polls right from within our discussion boards. We got excited about easy-to-use tools that help instructors and students better engage with content and each other. It’s why we’re seeing so much more interaction,” said Beth Bailey, instructional designer at WVU.
When you’re more inclusive of how students learn, you’ll also see improvement in the quality of responses. The options for how and in what medium to respond is allowing students to express themselves in their own ways, moving them from transactional to more meaningful exchanges.
Together, these student engagement strategies can help you make discussions more interesting and engaging for students.
Best Platform for Group Discussion
There are many types of online discussion forums or the online group discussion platform. The best platform for group discussion is one that is flexible enough to accommodate any size or way in which an instructor wants to facilitate discussions online.
For example, consider group sizes when it comes to an online group discussion forum. While large, full class discussions can help everyone get to know each other and expand exposure to a variety of perspectives, it can also be limiting. Students who are more naturally shy may not participate. That’s why it’s important to vary the size of discussions and use smaller break out groups or student-led discussion techniques.
An online group discussion forum like this creates opportunities for more students to lead discussions, and it also helps those students who are more comfortable sharing in small groups. But to create a space that can support a variety of online discussion groups and rich conversation, you have to have the right tools.
Just as important, you’ll want to create an interactive discussion. An interactive discussion example includes fostering a space for students to create social presence, interact, and practice leadership — doing that will help create a more interactive space.
For example, research from the University of Alabama shows that student participation increases when students facilitate online discussions. And in a Baran and Correia’s (2009) study of an online graduate course, researchers found that whether these peer-facilitation methods included highly organized facilitation or practice-oriented facilitation in asynchronous discussion, the methods kept students engaged with the material and relying on student-to-student interaction instead of just student-to-instructor interaction.
With the right capabilities, instructors can easily incorporate a wide range of collaborative activities, including facilitating discussions by section or groups, breaking students out into groups by topic, and supporting these student-led discussions. This approach to online collaboration encourages more student-to-student communication and continues to honor the asynchronous communication needs of most online learners.
Discussion Apps for Students
Thankfully, the online discussion platform for students has evolved since their early LMS days. For example, the ability for instructors to better organize discussion threads as well as the introduction of more modern social-based communication elements like mentions, have made them much more attractive. However, the challenges of many traditional online discussion tools remain.
The online discussion forum that mimics familiar experiences often have the highest usability — think features like tagging/mentions, reactions, in-app and email notifications, and social media-like interfaces. If a student or instructor logs in and can connect the screen they’re viewing to something they are familiar with from their personal lives, they’re more likely to engage.
When it comes to discussion apps for students, don’t make technology one of the barriers to participation. Capabilities for creating smaller and student-led discussion groups, tagging instructors or other students, and flagging questions for more feedback all lead to increased student activity and engagement.
A suite of online discussion and collaboration tools, Harmonize integrates seamlessly with the LMS to facilitate a more engaging online learning experience. These tools focus attention on the activities that drive engagement, including:
- Powering collaboration during course prep with instructors and among students.
- Creating multi-directional synchronous and asynchronous communication pathways during coursework to build community.
- Fostering inclusive opportunities by removing barriers, enabling flexibility, and expanding access.
These digital learning tools increase the quality and quantity of student-to-student, student-to-content, and student-to-instructor interactions and include:
- Rich Multimedia
- Video, Image, and Document Annotation
- Built-in Chat, Polling & Q&A
- Tagging, Notification & Reactions
- Streamlined Grading to Save Instructors Time
- Engagement Insights to Monitor Student Participation Trends
In addition, Harmonize has integrated with ChatGPT leading to a series of new features designed on sound pedagogy and a systematic, building-block approach that flows from assignment development to rubric generation and student coaching.
- Discussion Prompt Generation at Scale: Using the instructor’s topic and effective interaction strategies for discussion and assignment prompts, this feature allows instructors to generate more engaging discussion prompts in less time.
- 2-click Rubric Generation: Using the instructor’s prompt, this feature generates a rubric with four focus areas for success and, optionally, turns that into a grading rubric, eliminating the need to produce a rubric manually from scratch.
- Rubric Coach for Students: Using the instructor’s rubric, the Rubric Coach gives students real-time feedback with a simple rating of how they’re performing on each rubric criteria so they can self-assess possible improvements and iterate on their work before instructor assessment.
- Engagement Insights: This feature monitors students’ behaviors with those correlated with retention so instructors can more easily identify potentially at-risk students and pull them back into the conversation.
Harmonize’s online discussion platform includes everything an instructor needs to increase student engagement in online discussions and promote inclusive learning, while saving time and eliminating manual tasks.