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- Promising practices in online
- Principle 2: good practice
- Student-centered discussion -
3. collaborative writing
Small groups work to develop a paper that all contribute to and jointly edit and modify for the final product. The final product is posted to the discussion board for critique and review by the class.
Sample collaborative writing assignment
You and your writing team are to create a review of the research study provided to you. You will use the Research Study Review Rubric to jointly craft your responses to the following items:
- Critique the purpose of the study to determine if the problem is worthy of investigation. Support your reasons with facts obtained from other sources.
- Analyze the literature review for breadth and depth. List other sources that you believe should be included in the literature review.
- ...
You are required to turn in a draft document for each section listed above. I suggest you share the work and then use editing tools (TrackChanges and Comments) to demonstrate collaboration. I require you to turn in the draft with evidence that different authors contributed to the final draft. I will make comments and return the draft to you for revision. I expect you to share the draft among the group and to address all edits and comments before returning the final to me.
4. discussion board debate
Small groups are assigned a particular perspective on a topic and required to develop a written response to the topic. Controversial issues seem to work well for this strategy and you might consider having the groups prepare on both sides of an issue and then assign the groups to one stance or the other stance later in the week. The various perspectives are posted for review and then the groups are required to respond to an opposing perspective. You can determine how many rounds are required for the strategy and then move to some consensus-building discussion to allow all viewpoints to contribute until a position is defined and agreed upon by the entire class.
5. course readings
You create forums or threads around assigned readings throughout the course. Students are required to locate additional resources on topics covered in the readings and the group uses some sort of group process to rank the resources for usefulness in understanding the course concepts.
These are not the only ways to encourage cooperation on the discussion board. These are presented as examples to prompt thought. You are limited only by your own creativity when thinking of ways to encourage cooperation.
Graham et al. (2000) suggest
- Focus the discussion on a task.
- Tasks should result in a product.
- Engage the student with the content.
- Provide feedback on the discussions.
- Quality of the postings should be more important than number or length.
- Post expectations for the discussions prior to the discussions.
Palloff and Pratt (2003, p. 25) provide the following suggestions to maximize interaction.
- Model participation by contributing to the discussion.
- Monitor participation for both frequency and to intercede if discussion is moving away from the topic.
- Be willing to intercede if one or more students dominate the discussion since this may inhibit the participation of other students.
- If you notice certain students are not participating, personally contact them to invite more participation and to show concern for their learning.
Source:
OpenStax, Promising practices in online teaching and learning. OpenStax CNX. Aug 11, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10559/1.2
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