1. Fostering Student Engagement through Discussion Forums Gina Siesing, Ph.D., Associate Director for Educational Technology UIT Academic Technology University Teaching Conference 12/12/07

2. Today’s workshop will offer… An Overview of Discussion Tools Available at Tufts Examples to Frame Exploration Exploration of Individual Goals around “Engagement” Suggestions for Enabling Effective Discussions Hands-on Practice with Blackboard/TUSK Reflections on What Works for Particular Contexts Resources and Next Steps

3. Discussion Tools at Tufts: Blackboard

4. Discussion Tools at Tufts: TUSK

5. Discussion Tools at Tufts: SparkForums

6. Discussion Forum Terminology: Blackboard  TUSK  Spark  Discussion Board  Discussions/Discussion  Boards/Forums SparkForums  Add Forum  New Discussion  Create New Forum  Add Thread  Add Topic  New Topic  Initial Post and Replies

7. Special Discussion Tool Features: Attachments and Links (all) Watching/Subscribing to Forum (all) Flags - New/Recent, Sticky, etc. (all) Groups (all) Search (all) Aggregation - Collect, Sort, Print (Blackboard) Embedding images (Spark, TUSK) Avatars (Spark, TUSK) Who’s online / Private Messages (Spark, TUSK) Polling / Blog (TUSK)

8. A few examples for your consideration… what makes a discussion flop? what makes a discussion thrive? what’s the connection between online and face-to-face? Fletcher Students, 1975, TDL

9. Example 1: Addressing Diversity Challenges

10. Example 2: Fostering Student Connections

11. Example 3: Linking between Online and FTF

12. How can you tell whether a discussion is “successful”? ? How will the students know?

13. First, articulate your particular goal for the forum: “To foster students' engagement with course material” “To facilitate their connection with fellow students” “To create opportunities for reflective thinking” “To enable discussion of challenging topics” MAKE A NOTE OF YOUR SPECIFIC GOAL

14. Based on your goals, build your assignment: BROAD PARAMETERS: required or optional? credit or no credit? FRAMING THE ASSIGNMENT: where is the assignment published? specific roles you’ll play / specific roles for students? relation between online discussion and ftf interactions? ensuring students back up their work locally SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS: original posts/replies to others? genre and length of posts? time frames for posting, reading, replying?

15. Hands-on oddities… 1.(Nearly) synchronous activities in a medium meant for asynchronous communication…. 2.Having discussed the importance of instructional design, we move to the messiness of just-in-time experience….

16. Your First Assignment: 1. Log in to either Blackboard (blackboard.tufts.edu) or TUSK (tusk.tufts.edu). 2. Go to the “Fostering Student Engagement” course. 3. Go to the Discussions for the course. 4. Post one reply to the discussion board, “What forms of engagement are worth fostering?” No more than 2-3 sentences. 5. Next, read two of your peers’ responses and reply to at least one of these. 6. Report out on some of the responses you noticed in the forum. We’re here to help with logistics!!

17. Your Second Assignment: 1. In either Blackboard or TUSK, go to the “Fostering Student Engagement - Instructors” course. 2. Go to the Discussion tool and add a new Discussion Forum designed to foster student engagement in whatever way you wish. 3. Invite two of your neighbors to participate for 5 minutes. 4. You’ll also be participating in their newly created discussions. 5. What did you notice? 6. What would you modify to meet your goals for actual students? We’re here to help with logistics!!

18. Reflections on Approaches that Work… And thoughts about how you can foster meaningful engagement without investing inordinate amounts of time…

19. Resources and Next Steps: Blackboard: http://blackboard.tufts.edu Blackboard Help: http://ase.tufts.edu/its/blackboard/guide.htmhttp://ase.tufts.edu/its/blackboard/guide.htm Neal Hirsig, Assistant Director for Instructional Services, ITS neal.hirsig@tufts.edu

20. Resources and Next Steps: TUSK: http://tusk.tufts.edu TUSK Help: http://tusk.tufts.edu/view/course/HSDB/1185http://tusk.tufts.edu/view/course/HSDB/1185 Susan Albright, Director, TUSK tusk@tufts.edu

21. Resources and Next Steps: Spark: http://spark.uit.tufts.edu Spark Support Web Site: http://go.tufts.edu/sparksupporthttp://go.tufts.edu/sparksupport David Grogan, Manager, Curricular Technology Group, UIT david.grogan@tufts.edu

22. Resources and Next Steps: Consultation about instructional goals and approaches: UIT Academic Technology, uit-tlr@tufts.edu, 7-2451uit-tlr@tufts.edu UIT Encyclopedia for Teaching with Technology