Discussions

Webster University

Knowledge Center

Discussions

Asynchronous discussions can be used in all classes and are encouraged for extending the boundaries of your remote classroom. Top reasons to include asynchronous discussions are:

  • Flexibility
  • Inclusivity
  • Time
  • Professional Experience
  • Individualization

One of the most important aspect of students' success in online or remote learning is how connected they feel to the people in their class. So, some of your discussions can be about course content, but some might simply be about getting to know one another, as we would do face to face​. They help to create community and  build  on valuable peer to peer interactions and instructor-student interactions. 

One of the great benefits of an asynchronous discussion is that it allows students to process and contribute on their own time. Students have time to process the material, think about how it applies to them, and then take a moment to think about your question before answering. In a face-to-face classes, the extroverted students or external-processing students end up contributing more frequently than the reflective students. The online environment can therefore be helpful for more introverted or reflective students.​

"Discussions on Canvas were really good – actually maybe better than in class, because they were focused, more considered, and allowed more than just the “talkers” to participate."

The asynchronous discussion provides an easy way to organize activities in a repeating pattern: read/watch/listen/practice, then discuss. Anything that you have your students complete, you want to have some way of closing the loop on that activity, just as you would in-person. You wouldn't ask your students to read something if you weren't going to have time to talk about it in class. It's the same with online/remote instruction - for everything that you're asking them to watch or read, there should be some activity associated with it, and an online discussion is a simple way to accomplish that.​

  • The online discussion format allows you ask questions that prompts regular student reflection about learning, which is crucial to their growth and their motivation.​ This can allow your students to access areas central to their learning: reflection, metacognition, connection to their everyday lives, interpersonal interactions. 
  • Students are exposed to diverse ways of thinking: Just as in the in-person classroom, the online environment allows for students to listen to one another and share their own experiences.​
  • Sharing ideas and working with others in an asynchronous discussion can boost motivation. We know that it's much more motivating to work alongside others than to work on our own, and online discussions allow students to have the feeling that they're learning alongside one another.​

Suggestions for engaging discussion prompts:

    • Connect the discussion in clear ways to what you want your students to learn: make it clear which learning
    • Ask students to respond to content based on their own experiences or how the content relates to them (How have you seen x course principle operating in your everyday life?)​
    • Ask your students to reflect on their own learning (What was the most challenging part of this week's work? What questions would you like to ask author x about reading y?)
    • Ask your students to analyze a reading or video and provide an analytical response or connection to another author (Author x states "..." How does author y respond to this?)​
    • Set up two sides in a structured way and let students choose sides or assign them​ in a debate style discussion.
    • Assign small groups to participate in the discussion engage in collaboration, or for simulations or role plays​
    • Ask students to upload or link to their papers or another artifact they've created (reflection paper, website, blog, podcast, video), then have them provide short feedback to several of their peers in each thread​(peer review)
    • Ask students to submit their questions to the discussion thread before a synchronous session, then use that to inform what you focus on during your remote class meeting.​

Suggestions for success in discussions include:

  • Make sure outcomes every activity addresses, and get them to buy into the learning outcomes through reflective activities where they map the outcomes to their own goals—this helps them feel like the discussions are important, not busy work.​
  • Be clear with your expectations in terms of format and length, and replying to other students:
    • Tell your students what a successful post includes (be as transparent as possible—it might feel like overkill to tell them the number of sentences you want, but in my experience this helps students a lot).
    • Let them know how relaxed you are in terms of language, grammar, etc., and whether you'd encourage them to use images, video, memes, etc. as responses.
    • Let them know how many other students they should respond to and tell them how they should respond.​
  • Consider rubrics and grading: students don't want to spend time doing work unless it directly affects their grade. And if you can tell them what your expectations are in a rubric, this is helpful to them and to you as you grade.​
  • Ask students what makes for a good online discussion: Just as you might brainstorm at the beginning of the term in a f2f class about what productive discussion looks like, you can do that here, perhaps within a discussion itself the first week and then incorporate their comments into your rubric. You might ask "What do good online discussions look like? What do bad online discussions look like?"​

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