Peer-to-Peer Engagement  

Discussion boards are an element of peer-to-peer interaction which we hope to examine and refine. We look forward to hearing how your courses are proceeding and what is and is not working. A few key considerations: the size of the group, how groups will hear from each other, and whether students can see posts from their peers before posting their own response.  

We usually break students up into small groups for discussion boards so that they can engage more effectively and not be inundated with 30 posts. Groups of five tend to be ideal, but you can also use your own observations of student work to create slightly larger groups. The flip side is when a group is not engaged, so keeping track of who does and does not post consistently is essential for mixing students up just like we would in face-to-face classes. More disciplined and organized students will be spread out amongst the groups. If a student has been inconsistent with posting, you obviously hope and encourage the best, but you can add one more student to that group, for example. This also applies if you know a student will be late with a post because of personal information they have conveyed to you. Without letting the others know, you can speak with the student and let them know if there will be a penalty on their post and so on. Tina happily reopens the discussion board if a necessity arises. Janelle, on the other hand, leaves the threaded discussions (and most assignments) unlocked so the deadline is listed, but it does not prevent them from submitting. This choice should reflect your late policy and the flexibility therein. In Janelle’s case, the late policy requests that students submit within one week after the due date, but late work is better than no work. The compassionate, weekly check-in Canvas messages hold them accountable and let them know she cares. In turn, students feel safe to reach out, catch up, and finish strong. In addition to providing a wrap-up and overview post or video, Tina sometimes asks students to complete their own group discussions early in the week and then post a group response in a shared class discussion board later in the week so that everyone can have a sense of what is being discussed just like one might do when students share out in a class discussion. The results vary, with hybrid courses having a better response than fully online courses. Another strategy Tina uses in hybrid courses is asking students to post the first part of the discussion board assignment before class, adding notes based on verbal discussion in class, and then continuing the discussion online through the week.  

Discussion boards also give less vocal students a low-pressure space to participate in online and hybrid courses and support one another in the learning process. Formulating clear reply guidelines and possibly providing sentence starters or questions for students to answer can help reduce any confusion about expectations around engagement.  An interesting suggestion comes from Aloni and Harrington. While many of us ask students to address the person they are responding to and provide some guidance about replies, “results of a study conducted by Eryilmaz et al. (2015) showed that when students were required to highlight, increase the font size, and select the levels of importance of key points made by their peers in an online discussion board, they spent more time negotiating the meaning of the information compared with an instructor-led or a control group who did not utilize these functions” (Aloni and Harrington 272). Including these guidelines in the “reply” requirements can help students think deeply about their interaction with their peers and can potentially motivate the receiver of the feedback since someone is engaging meaningfully with their response. 

In Janelle’s experience, some students feel too nervous to post without being able to see other student posts because they might doubt their comprehension of the material. To meet this need, she allows students to see other posts before posting. If you choose to click the “Users must post before seeing replies,” you can reinforce their confidence and connection with peers by creating a “Student Lounge” threaded discussion and pin it to the top of the discussion tab. Once you’ve established Discussion Guidelines, the Student Lounge can be a safe space for student interaction. They can informally check comprehension of material, form study groups, share ideas, post resources, share memes, etc. As the instructor, you can monitor from time to time (and specifically tell them so), but the beauty of this discussion is that online students come to see one another as reliable community members. 

Feedback from the Instructor 

Providing diverse activities with clear expectations motivates students. At the same time, being a warm demander means knowing your students and using that to support them. “Getting to know your students will take effort, but it will create an environment that fosters both academic rigor and real engagement” (142). In addition to setting up discussions for peer-to-peer engagement, another area to consider is instructor interaction with posts during a given week. It is a balancing act; “too much intervention by the instructor can interfere with students’ knowledge building” (Aloni and Harrington 274). Not responding at all can also make a student feel like the instructor is uninterested in their ideas and that makes them feel disconnected and devalued. As we attempt to integrate more cogenerative practices by letting students construct the learning journey, we need to balance the frequency of interaction and guidance in a manner that stokes growth but does not hinder or neglect.  

Creating interesting discussion board assignments is the first step and will yield diverse responses that will encourage other students and the instructor to read and engage with the material. If we have a rote assignment and do not see the value of a post, the same will apply to students. Thomas Keith’s article “Spark Effective Discussions with Canvas Discussion Boards” succinctly provides a list of ways we can make discussions and assignments more interesting by including action verbs, what-if prompts, role-play prompts, and multimedia prompts. This year, Janelle integrated Bloom’s Taxonomy (action verbs galore) by introducing objectives with explicit action verbs that clearly relay how learning will be expressed. During the next term, Janelle will be constructing more interesting prompts to provide meaningful engagement. What-if prompts could prove especially valuable when approaching social justice issues and readings. For example, when discussing “Letter from Birmingham Jail” we could make part of that prompt “What if Martin Luther King didn’t take a leadership role the Civil Rights Movement? What if the unheard had gone unseen?” Role-playing could prove more challenging, but instilling a new level of empathy is possible through argumentative prompts written from the perspective of those in need of change. Multimedia prompts are a work in progress for Janelle, but still pictures, avatars, and Canvas studio integrations have been a gradual success. Students love sharing what makes their heart happy. The more they feel connected to the community and confident in the atmosphere of compassion and safety, the more likely they are to share and challenge their skillsets with new tools. Starting with pictures and gently moving up to brief recordings reinforces active student roles in the online space where they feel seen and valued.  

Once we create those interesting assignments, we need to consider how we respond to the work. This also means figuring out your response to posts that are not quite on track in a way that does not stifle participation. “The instructor can regulate the conversation by pointing out themes, highlighting accurate and important posts, correcting inaccuracies and proving a meaningful summary of the conversation” (282). That attention to our own behavior is often overlooked, but it provides yet one more moment of interaction where our behavior can make a student feel either seen and valued or can reaffirm negative stereotypes and triggers from past experiences. Often, we rely on the deficits in the performance, but thinking with a positive approach would create a safer, more collaborative space. “Feedforward simply asks the learner to reflect on what he could do better the next time… For example, rather than saying ‘I liked the examples, but wish there had been more of them,’ the teacher might say, ‘I really think your use of examples brings the ideas to life. How could you include more?’” (Tokuhama-Espinosa 15). Another tool is using appreciative inquiry language and teaching students to use the same model with each other. “Appreciative inquiry is based upon the act of appreciation and the premise of inquiry… From a developmental viewpoint, appreciation refers to acknowledging the value that a person holds, and inquiry denotes a process of exploration as a means of enhancing the learning process… there is combined purpose of uniting the two processes as a means of creating a shared vision or images about the future” (Johnson 8). Using the 4D cycle of discovery, dream, design, and destiny creates a vision for success. “The goal of an appreciative andragogy 4D cycle is to enhance the development of the instructor’s relationship with their students,” but it can also be taught and used by students in discussion boards and peer reviews. Beginning with student hopes and prior experiences with a course in the discovery phase and then imagining what the future will look like sets up the dream stage. The dream phase might simply be finishing the course, but some students will have additional goals. In the design phase, resources and strategies are shared and the destiny phase involves using the resources.  

Another possible approach to extending the discussion prompt (and peer reviews) is Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell’s 3CQ model: compliment, connect, comment, and question.  

• Compliment. To acknowledge the contributions of others, Stewart-Mitchell encourages learners to start by praising a specific aspect of the post. A template might direct learners to begin their post with the phrase, “I like that your post…” 
• Connect. This step is also about building community and connection. It’s about relating, on a person level, with what the person said. For example, the learner might write, “I had the same thing happen to me when…” or “I read a similar story in X which…” 
• Comment. The next step adds to what was said in the post by providing a response to it. It may be a statement of agreement or disagreement. The response may begin with, “What I would add to your post is that…” or “I might come to a different conclusion because…” 
• Question. The last step is about keeping the conversation going by asking a specific question about the topic under discussion. Ways to state this is to write, “I wonder why…” or “What effect might X have on…” 

While this approach does not provide an initial post guide, it does work as an effective response template for those who are new to the online platform or need a little more direction on how to connect with their peers.  

Grading & Assessment  

Clear, consistent grading or rubrics are another essential element of online assignments, including discussion boards. Having clear and consistent due dates can help students organize their time. Tina asks students to post their response to an activity on Wednesday by 11:00 p.m. and reply to a certain number of peers in their small groups by Sunday at 11:00 p.m.. Janelle utilizes a similar timeline as it allows students plenty of time to read the material, formulate an initial response, and continue to contribute through the last half of the week. This set of due dates is followed most weeks except when a larger piece of text is due and there might be a switch to Friday/Sunday due dates; Tina also explains to students what the penalty will be (if any) for posting their response late and lets them know that a weekly discussion board closes by 11:59 p.m. Tina does not use a rubric (although she will), but she lets them know the number of points available for the response and replies. Janelle has adopted the @ONE course suggestion for points/grading clarity by providing a section below the instructions for information on grading and a 4-point rubric with specific terminology that details the expectations for each score.