After recently starting an online course I was surprised at the format in which it was presented to the participants. Having taking many online courses through several different institutions, this was the first one in which a study guide was present as a tool. I posted a question on the discussion board regarding this and the discussion that ensued was very interesting.
Some students were very familiar and pleased with the guide, some welcomed the guide as an offline resource, and some were quite taken back and in fact had their enthusiasm for the course diminished. Regardless of the reaction to the format of the course the ability of all the participants to state their feelings over this small issue was wonderfully captured within a discussion board.
One student stated quite clearly one of the great advantages of these discussion boards:
“I don’t think anyone would dispute your point of view Mr. X. I didn’t think we were for or against anyone, but expressing opinions as we might if we met face to face. In a regular classroom, this is what we might do, explore our opinions, gain perspectives and carry on. Is this possibly revealing the kinds of things we have to plan for in an online course? In online learning we don’t have face-to-face or continuity of exploring a topic. Time passes between comments. Opinions may be formed without exploration. To me challenging thinking is what learning is about. Is someone right or wrong? Not necessarily. Depends upon what you believe the goal of learning is. We could all agree, but do we want groupthink to happen?
You mention learning style…we do have preferences, but usually adults have honed a number of styles. Our text speaks of trying to get at all learning styles throughout a course, but that it is unrealistic to expect to be able to address every style all the time. I don’t really feel I know anyone here well enough to say that the course may not match their learning style. In fact, I frequently do learning styles analysis with adults taking courses and I’m always surprised at what the results are…learning styles are difficult to predict from a cursory view.
Thanks for the challenging ideas.
Discussion boards/threads are a great resource tool for allowing participants to freely express their thoughts on a common topic at their own pace and leisure. Participants can scroll forwards and backwards through a conversation to see the overall structure. A sense of virtual communities can be established through frequent contributors. Also as Lucy mention they basically replace the face-to-face discussions that occur within the classroom setting.
Mr. K does point out a significant disadvantage of these discussions and one as facilitators in which we need to be attuned. “Sometimes in haste and inexperience, participants of a discussion board post a message that, after reading a few responses to, wish they could retract. Before the original author knows it the discussion has gone off in a different direction.”
Discussion threads can become complicated and go off topic from the original posting. The can also become tedious as one general thought often splits into many thoughts (posts) and then each of these need to be responded to separately. This is where some participants will begin to feel the threads become more argumentative instead of collaborative.
This is where as facilitators we can monitor many of these discussions and be sure to keep the participants on track to the main initial thought/post. New ideas that emerge and are less related can be placed into new discussions for participants to expand upon. As facilitators we should remain open to keeping discussions fairly fluent and moderate those posts that may be extremely negative, personally attacking and devastating to the groups’ existence. (Palloff and Pratt, 2003, pg. 106)
References
Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (2003). The Virtual Student. A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners. San Francisco: Jossey Bass