23  comments

• Jo Temah
  07/16/2010
  loved your blog post on IGI Global!
• Joan Aitken
  07/16/2010
  Recently a student suggested I ask for a story on the topic of discussion.
  
  I've been pleased with the results as students self-disclose about themselves and make connections between the material and experiences or stories they've heard.
  
  Plus I add a few stories of my own which I hope generates more of who I am for a students.
• Lenny Shedletsky
  07/16/2010
  Joan--
  
  Now i am curious about how you asked for a story on the topic of discussion. Was this for an online course? And what did you ask students to do?
• Alice Goodwin
  07/16/2010
  Hi Lenny-
  
  The best online discussions that I have had have been those where other students have openly disagreed with my posts. I should clarify this by saying that it was not merely a student saying that they disagreed but the fact that they took the time to elaborate and substantiate why they disagreed.
  As a student, I found that this type of interaction with my online peers was most enlightening and rewarding.
  Interestingly, we never regarded these discussions as argumentative. Although we rarely changed our individual positions on the topic at hand, we were able to gain invaluable insight.
  For me, this is what discussion is all about- being able to look at all sides of an argument while maintaining complete objectivity.
• Melinda Torrens
  07/16/2010
  Alice,
  I agree that the most stimulating discussions (both online and off) are those where multiple perspectives and discord are present as well as an appreciation for the diversity of opinion. Such discussions spark deeper understanding and new thoughts.
  
  In my opinion, the instructor's role in generating these discussions is to pose a controversial question and require a response, then facilitate further discussion on a topic by linking together student responses(for example, ask Joe what he thinks of Susan's opinion about ____). Involvement in these discussions should be graded as class participation to encourage involvement.
  
  In response to Joan's post:
  I like the story idea. Depending on the course subject, this will be more or less appropriate but asking students to relate their experiences to a topic of study asks them to reflect upon their agreement or disagreement with theories or phenomena, perspectives they may not have otherwise considered.
  
  I suppose the value in this approach depends on whether you subscribe to education as a means to develop critical thinking or education as a means of data transfer. I believe the former should be our goal.
• Missaed
  07/16/2010
  I too believe that education should be to develop critical thinking. Yet, it seems to often deteriorate to simple data transfer. I feel that motivation is a key factor. As Alice said, disagreement stimulates 'enlightenment,' but this takes work. Where does the motivation come from to put forth this effort. If it is external motivation, I believe we will only be able to accomplish data transfer. It must be internal motivation in order for critical thinking to be developed. I took an online intro to music course and intrapersonal communication at the same time. I was very personally interested in intrapersonal communication. My motivation to participate in the discussions came from a deep interest in the subject and a strong desire to understand it more. My critical thinking was very much developed in this course. My motivation to participate in the discussion in the music course was the rubric. I knew what I needed to get an 'A' and my participation showed that. Data transfer was accomplished, but critical thinking was not.
• Lenny Shedletsky
  07/16/2010
  I am imagining that if you required for me to post or say something in class in order to get a grade, I would comply. But I have difficulty imagining that I would be in the state of mind that I experience when I am genuinely caught up--engaged--in thought. Earlier today, I came out of class in which we finished viewing the film, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" If you are familiar with the film, then you know it is a rich and complicated story. It is not easy to make sense out of or pull together. Yet the class had come to the end of a course on discourse and was armed with some concepts that they could apply. They are juniors and seniors. Yet, when asked to speculate, few had anything to say. I offered my own speculation but got back little response.
  
  They looked interested but frozen in place.
  
  Reading the posts above, I am wondering how much of a role is played by our fear of thinking out loud. How much does fear enter into launching into the expression of imagination as opposed to "transfer of data?"
  
  I think we need to be cautious in suggesting just what it takes to get the discussion going? And I agree that it is easier to get people to speak than it is get them genuinely engaged.
• Alice
  07/16/2010
  And I believe that it is those students who are genuinely engaged in the discussion at hand that are most likely to achieve higher levels of critical thinking in their original posts and responses to others.
  Wayne talked about personal relevance and although I believe that it can be a component of good discussion, it is only one piece of the puzzle. Climate is another piece and I think that we, as students, would be remiss if we left the establishment of a safe and secure discussion arena up to our professors.
  At some point, ownership must be taken by students as it is, ultimately, our education. Do we want to be in the driver's seat or merely passengers along for the ride?
  I agree that graded discussions might prompt more posts but not necessarily better posts. After all, what are we really looking for in a discussion that is engaging and thought provoking? Quantity or Quality?
• Missaed
  07/16/2010
  Wayne here . . .
  
  We may be remiss, but how do you get us to care. As long as I pass, and get my grade, why should I care about anything else?
  
  Ah, fear. Such a powerful emotion. The fight or flight response is hard wired into our brains. I wonder if we knew how to use fear to provoke 'fight' instead of 'flight' what the results would be for discussion.
• Melinda
  07/16/2010
  While I agree with the comments regarding ownership and quality of the discussion belonging to students, I fear that some students need the requirement to feel comfortable.
  
  Another thing to consider is some students don't have much experience with online discussion (some with little experience in any substantive in depth discussion especially in these days of superficial Facebook conversations). Requiring their contribution may be the one impetus that pushes them out of the comfort zone of an observer. SO what starts off as quantity may eventually evolve into quality - not likely in one semester, but over the course of progress toward a degree.
  
  I know in my own experiences, there has been little encouragement from the instructor to participate in online discussions and no one reaches out. I am very likely to participate in discussions (obviously!) but don't like talking to a wall so if no one else is participating/responding, I lose interest. Has anyone else had that experience?
• Lenny Shedletsky
  07/16/2010
  Melinda:
  
  I have marvelled when i have read the evaluations of students at the end of a semester who complain that there wasn't enough interaction. These are students who, I suspect, want others to participate in order to encourage them to join in. On the other hand, students who have high anxiety about speaking in a discussion usually do not want to be called upon. I do think that a bit of calling upon people or pushing back on what they say may improve the discussion, but I am not confident that just getting them to speak will do much more than increase the amount of talk.
  
• Missaed
  07/16/2010
  Wayne, again . . .
  
  “[S]ome students need the requirement to feel comfortable.” This is a very interesting concept. Teaching in China, this makes a lot of sense. Traditionally, the teaching system here is very much teacher centered and test centered. When students are put into a free discussion type environment, they are very uncomfortable and lost. It takes time for them to develop the skills needed to handle this freedom. Critical thinking is a skill, so it makes sense that it will take repetition (quantity) in order to develop this skill (quality).
• Melinda
  07/16/2010
  Lenny writes:
  "I have marvelled when i have read the evaluations of students at the end of a semester who complain that there wasn't enough interaction."
  
  This is really interesting. I find myself just as frustrated when i am sitting in a classroom and no one makes any contribution to the discussion. I often find myself supressing my responses because i fear i am dominating the conversation. But then when i am quiet, it becomes even more obvious that others are just not ready to engage.
  
  So the question is: why? Are they not interested? Too tired or lazy? Too self conscious or afraid to speak out loud? Too inexperienced? I honestly don't know. But I do suspect there is some cultural component to this problem and therefore the turnabout will be slow.
  
  When teaching sales training classes, we discuss the 4 steps to mastery:
  
  Stage 1: unconscious incompetence
  Stage 2: conscious incompetence
  Stage 3: conscious competence
  Stage 4: unconscious competence
  
  I wonder how many would-be involved students are stuck in stage 2 where they know what they don't know but don't know how to get to the next stage so they just avoid the uncomfortable. Most of these students wouldn't miss a deadline for a project or assignment so it's not about the time involved.
  
  I guess i feel that we need to lead and train students better to make them feel their input is valuable and adequate - maybe requiring them to practice this skill will help.
  
  How do we stress the importance of developing these communication and networking skills?
• Alice
  07/16/2010
  Hi all- Alice here-
  I think that there remains another possibility for why students do not participate in discussions both in the online and face-to-face environment.
  
  Melinda said "So the question is: why? Are they not interested? Too tired or lazy? Too self conscious or afraid to speak out loud? Too inexperienced? I honestly don't know"
  
  Simply put, many students (both Traditional and Non-Traditional) are ill-prepared to discuss anything because they have not read the text. In fact,there were a few courses that I took where some students openly admitted that they did not have the textbook and had no plans to purchase it.
  
  I wouldn't classify this behavior as lazy so much as I would disinterested and uninvolved. As Wayne said, many just want to get the job done, pass the test, and graduate. Apparently many feel that they can accomplish this task without the text.
  
  So if students don't read the course material how effective would it be to require them to practice discussion skills? I think that students who are well-prepared are much more likely to participate in discussion and I do not believe that it is up to the professor to "train" them.
  
  Again, I come back to ownership of one's education and ownership of one's dedication to their studies and all that that entails.
• Dr. Wegmann
  07/16/2010
  Hello All,
  I have been conducting research in Asynchronous Online discussions and I was thrilled to read everyone's commitment to discussion! (More details can be found on my slideshare page: http://www.slideshare.net/Swegmann)
  
  The Connected Stance (the nexus of high participation plus high engagement) is highlighted by students challenging each other with questions, wondering, connecting their thinking with other texts and classes, etc. I have been working with a colleague on ways to measure the times that students enact a Connected stance. It is wonderful to see that others are interested in engaging online discussions!
  
  For more information, please see:
  Wegmann, S. (2009) Interactions Online. In Rogers, P., Berg, G., Boettcher, J., Howard, C., Justice, L., and Schenk, K. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Distance and Online Learning. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Retrieved March 2, 2009: http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/pdf/Rogers1259.pdf.
  
  
  Wegmann, S. (2009). “Cross Talk” Online: A Case Study of One Successful Student’s Online Interactions. In B. Olaniran (Ed.) Cases on Successful E-Learning Practices in the Developed and Developing World: Methods for the Global Information Economy. Hershey, PA: IGI .
  
  Wegmann, S., & McCauley, J. (2007) Can you hear us now? Stances toward interaction
  and rapport. In Y. Inoue (Ed.), Online Education for Lifelong Learning.Hershey,
  PA: Information Science Publishing.
  
  Wegmann, S. (2007). Engaging the Mind through the Fingers: An Analysis of Online
  Interaction and Stance, In Falk-Ross, S., Foote, R., Linder, P., Sampson, C., and
  Szabo, S. 2006 CRA Yearbook Volume 28.
  
  
  I would also love to collaborate with others, so envision the Connected Stance in other settings. . . Please contact me, if anyone is interested in more information! (swegmann@mail.ucf.edu)
  
  Regards,
  Susan
  University of Central Florida
• Lenny Shedletsky
  07/16/2010
  Hi Susan:
  
  Your post is wonderful. I am in the process of tracking down the various resources you offer before offering a fuller response. I just tried one of your sites but bumped into a problem at:
  
  http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/pdf/Rogers1259.pdf
  
  I look forward to more talk with you.
  
  Lenny
• Alice
  07/16/2010
  Hello everyone- Alice here-
  
  I cannot stop thinking about our discussions here and still keep coming back to the commitment and ownership of one's education.
  As a college student, my education consisted of both face-to-face and online courses. At the conclusion of my face-to-face course periods,a minimum of 5-10 students would wait patiently in order to talk with their professor. They had questions about course materials and assignments.
  How many students ask questions of their online professors? I would venture to guess that the number is much lower than in face-to-face courses. Why?
  Our online professors are equally available to us via email, telephone, and face-to-face meetings. However, I honestly don't believe that the typical online student takes advantage of these opportunities. Why?
• Melinda
  07/16/2010
  Alice, I agree with your comment that many students are ill prepoared for a discussion because they haven't studied the material. That is a sad truth I've discovered particularly in lower level classes.
  
  you also said "At the conclusion of my face-to-face course periods,a minimum of 5-10 students would wait patiently in order to talk with their professor. They had questions about course materials and assignments."
  
  This got me thinking about my expepriences in the classroom and I'm surprised I never noticed this before. As a real estate broker, I am constantly attending training. After class about 10-20 people will always mill around to discuss the topic with the instructor and each other but that does NOT happen in most of my college courses.
  
  I think it's much harder to connect with people when we aren't face to face. There is less immediate feedback and the flow of conversation is interupted.
  
  
  Susan,
  
  Thanks so much for your post! I am looking forward to reading.
  Melinda
• Lenny Shedletsky
  07/16/2010
  I have been intending to track down some of Susan Wegmann's articles and to read them--thanks to Melinda, I did get my hands on a few. I would offer them here but i suspect i would be breaking copyright rules if i did. But I do want to comment on the 2 I read.
  
  I enjoyed reading both papers. The first one i read was titled "Interactions Online," and talked about the idea of a connected stance, initiating persaonally meaningful questions about the text, displaying wonder, or initiating unique topics of discussion. It contrasted the structure of online discussion with the IRE structure of the face-to-face classroom, teacher asks questions--students answer--teachers evaluate. It looks like online we get far more student to student talk.
  
  I was particularly interested in the idea of "a contrived stance," where students do their coursework without much connection to it.
  
  The second article, "Going fully online: Reflections on creating an engaging environment for online learning," worked off of teachers' experiences and surveys to describe the landscape of the online discussion. At one point, the article referred to it self as "informed musings at worst, and we acknowledge that scientific rigor was not a focus of this essay." So, we will take the "findings" as interpretive. Nevertheless, I found the article very thought provoking and entirely in line with my own experiences with online discussion.
  
  It address issues such as just how much the teacher ought to enter into the discussion and how hard she/he ought to push back, the influence of anonymity (or what was called 'relative anonymity'), time to respond, and requiring replies, as well as the notion of social presence, "the degree to which the user feels present in a mediated interaction."
  
  I felt at home with all of the ideas discussed. I suspect that once we pay close attention to discussion and read a bit of the literature, we find our selves coming to similar cross roads. I arrived at some of these cross roads from a different direction, but nevertheless, wound up in about the same place. I suppose the next step is to determine what we can do to make the discussions better. One idea that Susan Wegmann offered that got me thinking that maybe i ought try it is the idea of a Cyber Cafe, a 'place' in the online course where students could go to chat. I have never used that but I am left wondering if I ought to add a button to my online course for a Cyber Cafe. What do you think?????
• Alice Goodwin
  07/16/2010
  Hi Lenny-
  
  I would be curious to see if a "Cyber Cafe" would motivate more students to actively participate in discussion. If these Cyber discussions showed higher levels of critical thinking than their BlackBoard counterparts, I would have to then ask "Why"? The answer that immediately comes to mind for me is climate. Is the perception of a chat room less formal and less intimidating than that of an online discussion board?
  
  I believe that climate is perhaps one of the most important pieces of the quality discussion puzzle. I also believe that inquisitiveness is another. In my opinion, it is the questioning process that really gets a discussion off the ground and Elementary school age children appear to be completely uninhibited when it comes to asking questions.
  
  In thinking back to my own children, they actually displayed higher levels of critical thinking in their formative years than did many of my college peers. Why? Once again, I believe that climate may be the answer.
  
  Somewhere along a student's educational journey the desire to ask questions, hypothesize, and formulate solutions vanishes. Is it because the educational climate changes from grades K-12? Perhaps. Is peer pressure responsible for these changes? If it is, at what stage does it occur and what could be done to prevent it?
  
  Perhaps another study comparing levels of critical thinking between Elementary, High School, and College age students would help to answer this question.
• Alice Goodwin
  07/16/2010
  Hi Melinda-
  
  I have been thinking about your statement that "I think it's much harder to connect with people when we aren't face to face. There is less immediate feedback and the flow of conversation is interupted".
  
  I disagree and here is why:
  
  I think that it is much easier for students, to connect in the online discussion environment. The perceived anonymity allows for a much more comfortable environment. One that greatly reduces one's fear of rejection from their peers both verbally and non-verbally.
  
  I don't believe that the flow of conversation is interrupted at all. In an online course each student is able to take however much time they need to really think about their initial posting and subsequent responses to others. The luxury of time may actually improve the quality of discussion.
  
  I also think that there is a distinct difference between conversation and discussion. I have seen far more "conversations" in face-to-face classes and far more "discussions" in online classes. Time or lack of it can be a major attribute or a major detriment to ongoing, thoughtful discussions and higher levels of critical thinking.
• Melinda
  07/16/2010
  Thank you Alice! Very valuable insight and I have to agree with you that there is a significant distinction between conversation and discussion and that the luxury of time allows much more opportunity to respond intelligently (in terms of how we perceive others will recieve our comments).
  
  Time is a double edged sword. I do still believe the flow is interupted because often (for me) new insight and ideas are spawned from someone else's reflexive response - spontaneous, immediate - but I also recognize this is a subjective preference. For me there is a degree of momentum that occurs in face to face discussion where I can become much more absorbed into the topic. Give me face to face with a laptop where I can Google information I don't have readily off the top of my head and i'm in heaven!
  
  I disagree about the "perceived anonymity". I feel much more exposed in the online discussion forum. After all, my comments are "published". They're a written expression of my thoughts that others can read again and again, show to someone else... Once they're out there, there's no pulling them back, and the potential audience is much more extensive. I know when I post on Blackboard, other students know who I am by name whereas in the classroom, names may be forgotten or unknown.
  
  But I also feel "rejection" in most environments is more about our own ego than the repercussions from others. We attribute much more importance to what we say than others likely do. So the fear is more about how we judge ourselves. we are our own worst critic.
  
  I love the idea of a cybercafe - if students can create their own screen name that only the instructor can match to the student wherby anonymity is most closely achieved.
  
  "Somewhere along a student's educational journey the desire to ask questions, hypothesize, and formulate solutions vanishes"
  I think this is the result of the traditional educational model of instructor asks question, student regurgitates answer from text or notes. Class time is usually more demanding of rote exercise and review of text than making and sharing meaning of information learned. I like to think education has evolved over the past few generations but experience tells me otherwise.
  
  I have six children, 2 are mid 20's, the others are between 13 and 15. Between Yarmouth and Alexandria, VA, my kids have been exposed to honors programs at some of the top schools in this country but even these schools treat children like little soldiers. Following direction and responding predictably is more highly valued than learning and thinking.
  
  Don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of this manner of teaching too but would like to see some blend of accessing information and discussing ideas, helping students make an intimate connection with topics studied and less lecture, more discussion. Good thing we still have the dinner table and the car.
• Simon Paul Atkinson
  08/30/2010
  Hi Lenny
  It's nearly the end of August 2010 and a few months since the volume came out (congratulations) and it's been fascinating to read the contributions and follow some of the very practical issues raised here in these posts.
  
  Since Kevin Burden and I shared the chapter based on our Voicethread experiments with you (De-Coupling Groups in Space and Time), I'm finding through my more recent work in developing the SOLE Model of learning that I'm increasingly aware of my assumptions about student motivation. Some posts here talk about the need to issue a requirement for participation. My feeling increasingly is that through our learning designs, at course, module or individual lecture/seminar level, we need to take account of a number of elements (I cite nine). Within these there is the question of motivation.
  
  You want me to participate, but have you told me why? Is it clear to me why this discussion is valuable. Do I share a view (assumption) that learning is 'for its own sake) or do I simple need a reason (I suspect credit is one reason but not the only one). AS an educational developer I'm working with Faculty increasingly to take some ownership of the 'stewardship' or learning, and to share their purpose with students. John Bigg's Constructive Alignment is a nice way of doing this, getting faculty to see the relationship between the intended outcomes, the prescribed assessment and the individual learning and teaching activities. 
  
  In the SOLE Model I talk about Social Context, and Personal Context and I think these are very important in allowing the student to position themselves consciously relative to our intended leanring outcomes for any particular discussion. When the PURPOSE of the discussion is clear, rather than assumed, comprehension levels are higher and so is willingness to engage!