Sample Activities to Promote Online Discussions

• Help create a sense of community, at the beginning of your course, by designating a Welcome conference where students and teachers post short biographical information. Some instructors like to call this conference the "water cooler", "coffee shop" or "student lounge" conference.

  Keep this conference causal. It allows a place where class participants can get to know each other. By requiring initial postings, the instructor can make sure that every student is able to use the technology to communicate with their peers. Make sure you respond to every student and ask that other students respond to their classmates. Email absent students privately and ask if they need any help joining the discussion.

• Have students critique an online article or website (the article or website needs to be online so that everyone in the class has access to the original information). As the instructor, you may want to keep a list of good articles and summaries to start a resource list not only for the current but future classes.
  
  
• Debates or discussions of controversial topics. Here it is important to ensure that your students are respectful of various points of views and respond to postings with evidence supporting their point of view.

  One way of promoting this type of discussion is to have students take a particular point of view and research information from that perspective. For example, logging or mining in a particular area from the point of view of an environmentalist, an industry (e.g., logger or miner) worker, or a merchant in town dependent on that resource.

• Form small learning groups or teams. Learning triads (groups of three students) seem to be an optimal number.

Sample group activities that promote discussion might include:

• researching a topic (let the students pick a relevant topic) and then reporting back to the entire group by moderating an online conference.
  
  
• providing weekly summaries of discussion threads.
  
  
• small group analysis of case studies.

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Can you think of any thing else?

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