While your LMS discussion tool helps to foster student interaction, you may feel limited by its structure and capabilities. It’s time to bring some variety into the way students interact with you and each other. Here are three ways to cultivate rich, real-life conversations in the discussion area of your online course:

1. Let students post audio and video responses.

With audio and video, students pick up on verbal and visual cues as well as personality and cultural uniqueness that typed responses do not always capture.

Take a look at this video in which Daniel L. Randall from Brigham Young University shares examples of his students’ video responses and explains the power of video to drive engagement and learning:

(We recommend you watch the entire recording, but if you’re short on time, start the video at 13:49.)

Using Canvas to Create Community in Online Courses, Daniel L. Randall, Brigham Young University from Instructure on Vimeo.

Tools we recommend–

• VoiceThread, which allows students to upload and discuss documents, images, presentations, and other file types using audio and video responses. Watch how VoiceThread works. Also check out this article that discusses how VoiceThread humanizes the virtual classroom.

• YouTube, which allows students to record and host videos to upload in the discussion area of your course.

• Video feedback recording tool (as found in the Canvas LMS), which allows students to record directly inside the course.

2. Require students to respond using blogs or wikis.

Wikis and blogs can transform course discussions into student-centric experiences that cultivate peer-to-peer teaching:

• Using wikis, students can collaboratively build on each other’s discussion responses to create cohesive, interconnected content in a single location.

• Using blogs, students can discuss and respond to each other in an environment where personalized learning takes place.

Whether you choose a blog or wiki, the goal is the same: provide students with a discussion space outside the LMS to create a deeper sense of community and foster active learning.

Tools we recommend–

• Blogger: Watch this tutorial for creating a blogger.
• Wikispaces: Watch this tutorial for setting up and using Wikispaces.

3. Allow students to decide how they respond.

By choosing the technology or tools they prefer, students become more autonomous, active learners.

Tools we recommend–

• Interactive version of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Pyramid (below), which can serve as a guide for students in choosing an appropriate tool. Students can select a tool for the discussion prompt response for the appropriate learning domain.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Author: Samantha Penney, samantha.penney@gmail.com

Share Your Experiences

What methods or tools do you use to enrich course discussions? Share with us in the discussion section below.

Melissa (2 Posts)

Dr. Melissa Kaulbach is the Director of Academic Services. She is also a faculty member at Sarasota University, where she currently teaches graduate courses in Educational leadership and Montessori Leadership.She enjoys teaching, facilitating faculty workshops and presenting at conferences.