Discussion Boards, Best Practices

Discussion boards aren’t good for asking questions that have a definite “yes” or “no” answer. If that’s what you’re looking for, try a quiz question or assignment instead. When you use a discussion board, you want to ask open-ended questions. Or, use it to “role play” (ask students to respond based on a particular perspective—for example, a description of a disease nursing students might communicate to a doctor vs. a description more appropriate to give to a patient). Discussion boards can also be useful for attacking and defending a provocative statement (both backed up with rationales, of course; alternatively assign students to attack and defend).

Be very clear about the ground rules, including how often students can expect you to participate. There’s no need for a lengthy discourse on netiquette, but you do need to explain your requirements clearly. (Good basic requirements: Attack positions but not people, always sign your name, and use standard grammar and punctuation). If you’ve set up a discussion board that’s student-only (for example, a “student lounge” type of discussion board) make sure students understand you won’t be participating in that one.

Discussion boards take time to monitor and manage—especially the first couple of weeks of each semester. Weigh in heavily, especially at first. Praise, correct, draw out students who aren’t quite getting it. Model the type and quality of response you expect from students. Managing online discussions is a time-intensive activity, so you’ll have to decide how many discussions you can afford to manage during the course of an online semester. Another approach is to manage the first few, and then assign students (rotating) to manage and/or summarize subsequent discussions.

Allow and then encourage students to subscribe to important discussion boards. Doing so alerts them when classmates have posted, so that they don’t waste time checking an inactive discussion board.

Discussion boards can be graded (but don’t have to be). If you choose to grade student discussions, make sure you provide a rubric that’s very specific in terms of the number, length, and quality of the posts you expect. (For example, you might want to specify that all posts must be backed up with a page number from the textbook.) Consider providing examples of both good and bad posts.

You can set up separate discussion boards for individual groups. Doing so is a good way to limit interactions in large enrollment classes. (Managing discussions with more than about 20 students can get complicated.)