Teaching and Learning Using Internet On-Line Courses

Charles E. Ophardt, Professor of Chemistry,
Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois 60126, USA
email: charleso@elmhurst.edu

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Online Discussion and Communication Methods:

If the World Wide Web is just used to disseminate materials, an on-line course is limited, isolated, and lacks the interaction necessary for students to learn from one another. Consequently, an online course designer must look at methods to ensure that educational discussion and learning is facilitated. Teaching and learning need to be stimulated and promoted by group collaboration and discussion among students and students/professor.

Communication in on-line courses may take the following forms: Asynchronous communication using email, list serves, and a web based discussion board for "any time" discussions; Synchronous communication using conferencing software (chat rooms), and MOO's ( Multi-user Object Oriented) for multi-party "same time" on-line discussions. Students are able to participate in class discussions with peers and the professor.

Since the normal lecture/discussion in a traditional classroom is missing, an online course must involve the students in discussion of content and issues. Students are able to ask more questions that probably would not have been asked in class. They are able to articulate and understand different points of view. Dispersed students are enabled to communicate interactively across time zones and borders.

It may take a variety of approaches to find the right procedure and subject matter for class discussions. In my experience, the students do not readily engage in a discussion, and need a grade or " points" as inducements. The "right" questions need to be asked to stimulate discussion. Controversial issues or debate type questions seem to foster more discussion.

Web Discussion Boards for Asynchronous Discussion:

An Internet web discussion board enables students/faculty to post messages/discussions directly onto the internet with no need for email. There are many commercial, shareware, and free software programs that are used as discussion boards. These discussion boards allow a versatile set up of topics, monitoring, use various formats, equations, graphics, and reference URL's. Good discussion board software facilitates "threaded" discussions where all similar messages on the same topic are grouped. All messages are visible or at least available for easy access under a particular topic. Follow up responses by faculty and students are easily facilitated. Unlike email, a discussion board, preserves and maintains all of the messages in a public forum. The instructor need answer a question only once and post it on the discussion board for all students to benefit. Some discussion boards provide for private groups within a class to have a space for private discussion and to work on collaborative projects.

Enhance Class Learning - Discussion, Communication, Collaboration, and Writing:

How can you use an electronic discussion board to enhance class discussion? What kinds of activities do you currently use in the classroom to foster communication, collaboration, and writing skills? Will any of these activities be enhance student learning by using an out of class electronic discussion? Some of the benefits may include:

• increased communication by ALL of the students - not just the few that are willing to participate in a "live" discussion.
• increased participation in group collaborative discussion.
• richer and more complete and well thought out ideas and contributions to the discussion
• writing skills may improve when thoughts and ideas are written rather than verbally communicated
• some may say that the informal writing style of an electronic discussion brings out more spelling and grammatical errors.

Methods to Foster Discussion:

The instructor should pose a mix of questions including open-ended, opinion based, and specific application. The topics should be carefully chosen to generate some interest and excitement, something a little controversial, or something without just one "right" answer. For larger issue type discussions, I have found that it is useful to post a series of smaller sub questions to focus on the facts, questions, and problems of the larger main issue question.

Participation in discussion should be made a requirement with points or extra credit given in in the grading scheme. I do not think that a purely voluntary discussion will work. Discussions without some fairly specific questions or objectives do not work very well either. For example, if you just ask for the students to comment on some of the class work in general - this does not work very well either. A requirement to answer two to three questions per week may be optimal. It also may be useful to make a requirement that a student must respond to another student as this helps to foster a genuine "give and take" discussion. If this is not done, many students will just post their response and not really engage in discussion at all.

The instructor should be careful about giving highly critical public assessments of on-line comments, but rather give behind the scenes feedback through email. The instructor should use feedback comments to motivate, stimulate, gently prod, or be generally encouraging and non judgmental.

In all cases the instructor should carefully monitor the discussion and interject at appropriate times (and as soon as possible of a student posting) so that the students know that you are actively participating. On some discussions, you need to "hang" back and see if other students will answer another student question or make a response.