Teaching Online at UTAS

What do they do?

Discussions facilitate asynchronous communication between students and teachers in a unit. They can contain text, hyperlinks, images and videos.

It can take some time for students to become acquainted with Discussions as a communication vehicle. Students need to be informed of the rules of engagement. If students will be using Discussions frequently, take some time to build a ‘class climate’ by including ‘getting-to-know-you’ and opportunities to practice procedures. Academics should expect to help shape discussions until students have become more familiar with text discussion techniques.

Useful terminology

• Forums: act like categories containing relevant Topics. For example, a Forum called “Module Discussions” contains Topics called “Module 1 Activity”, “Module 2 Activity” and so forth. You can not post a message to a Forum.
• Topics: are where the action happens – they contains the messages posted by students and staff. Ideally, each topic has a single purpose: the discussion of a particular idea or question.
• Threads (also known as Posts): are created inside of a Topic. When a student posts a new idea in response to a topic questions, they should create a new thread.
  

• Replies: Are created in response to a Thread.  If a contributor wishes to respond to a Thread, they should reply to the Thread instead of creating a new Thread.

What are Discussions best for?

• Questions and answers about a unit.
• Getting to know classmates online (particularly for Distance students).
• Discussing issues and coming to a consensus about that issue. Contributions can be assessed.
• Sharing resources and providing peer feedback. You can allow students to provide peer feedback using Rubrics, comments and rating scales.

Tool capabilities

Assessable?
Turnitin?
Peer review?
Grademark?
Rubric?		*
Sychronous?
Asynchronous?
ITR Supported?
Can student contributions be quarantined?
Can versions of student contributions be reviewed?

*You can use a MyLO Rubric to mark Discussions, but it is not a very efficient method of marking assessments in this tool.

Helpful resources and instructions

• These instructions explain how to set up a Discussion Topic.
• This article (Toledo, 2006) provides useful advice about writing discussion questions that successfully elicit discussion.
• Setting expectations and guidelines for discussion activities. Includes sentence starters to scaffold effective participation.
• Explanation of different assessment options for Discussions. Includes setup instructions.