Teaching Online:

Learning through discussion.

Online Teaching Series

• Overview of my approach to online teaching

• Structuring and curating

• Learning through discussion

• Tasks and assignments

• FAQs

• Resources

• Webinar

• Webinar - Grad Student Edition

• Webinar Series - Examples and Tips

Disclaimer Haiku

This is what I’ve done
It won’t work for everyone
The students like it.

Discussion forums

Or discussion fora for the purists out there.

Modules consist of content items; I aim for five to eight per module. The content items will consist of readings or audio-visual materials that have been curated to bring focus to particular aspects of the module’s topics.

But here’s a simple trick: I don’t put the content items on a separate page in the learning management system (LMS). Instead, I embed the content items directly into their own discussion forum, with a discussion task for each content item. Why?

• My online courses are built around discussion, not lectures. Therefore I put the content right into the discussions.

• This has the subtle effect of indicating to the student that the reading/viewing of the content isn’t separate from the discussion of it. The discussion isn’t an add-on, it’s integral to the content.

• In this model of practice, students don’t study for exams, they study for discussions. It makes sense to have the content and the learning of that content together in the same space.

The instructor’s role is to frame the discussion in two ways: through the judicious curation of content, and through good management of the discussions. This starts with good discussion tasks being created for each content item. I divide the class into groups of about 8-10 students, which seems to be the optimal number for ensuring a worthwhile discussion.

Replacing lectures with discussion and ProfMoments

One of the advantages of the discussion approach is that it is a win-win situation: students learn through discussion and interaction, and instructors don’t have to spend time producing and uploading recorded lectures. That doesn’t mean that I don’t produce any videos for my courses. I do: they’re called ProfMoments, short videos that I produce on my own with a fancy camera (though recording with a computer or even a cellphone will work if you can get decent sound to match the video quality). These ProfMoments are usually no more than five minutes in length. I used them to introduce modules or answer questions or clarify concepts. They’re not crucial for the course to be successful, but they add a bit of variety. You can see an example on the FAQs page.