Some discussion board and lecture video tips for teachers

This month, Wiley published an infographic with survey results from college students and teachers about how the shift online for COVID19 affected learning. You can find it here: Emergency Remote Learning Satisfaction for Students and Instructors.

A couple of key takeaways stuck out to me, especially because they lined up with some professional development reading and webinars I did this past summer.

Students think lecture videos are better than online readings.

This was the case before the pandemic, too. Assessment stats actually don't back it up, but pretty consistently, students think videos are better than readings (source).

Student perception connects to student motivation, so it's probably worth recording lectures. Even if you already have a handout on the material, give students the option of watching and/or reading.

Standard best practices for video lectures apply, of course: brief (<10 minutes), tight (1-2 topics) and personable videos are the most watchable. Production value doesn’t seem to be as important as you’d think. See this Quality Matters article for more helpful guidelines.

Half of students and a third of teachers think discussion boards are a waste of time.

As you can see, I work really hard to bring a personal touch to my online classes.

The primary challenge in online classes is community, right? You can dump content online, but it’s harder to build relationships. Discussion boards seem like the easiest asynchronous answer—require students to converse about class content outside of class.

Easy—except everyone loathes them. They require students to journal in public about the homework. Students don’t usually discuss readings with each other at length on campus, and it’s awkward online too.

Some ways discussion boards can be improved

Put students in groups of 5 or fewer for discussion. At least they won’t have to broadcast their 500 words into the populous void. Talking to a small group of strangers gives them a better chance of getting to know each other. It can help, too, if students group themselves around common interests. Here’s one way to facilitate that.

Instead of prompting students to react to readings, ask them to apply the readings to a case study.

Provide the option of video posts instead of just text.

A couple alternatives to discussion boards

Group work. Working together on a problem is less awkward than reacting to each other’s reactions to the homework.

Polls. Students still express opinions, but without having to journal about them in public. You can make these pretty sophisticated, too, and you can use the feedback to shape the direction of live class time. Consider this example poll for a Bible class:

Prompt: The readings this week presented three interpretations of Rom. 7:14-25. Which did you find most persuasive?

• Historical present—this is Paul talking about his slavery to sin before salvation. Key evidence: narrative context (Rom. 7:9-11), compatibility with literary context (Rom. 7:14 and 6:7) and support of Greek church fathers.
• Christian experience—this is Paul describing his life as a Christian. Key evidence: use of present tense and support of Latin church fathers and Reformed tradition (Luther, Calvin and others).
• Identifying with the audience—this is Paul stepping into the shoes of an audience member who is raising objections to Rom. 6. Key evidence: use of present tense, use of this rhetorical device in literary context (Rom. 3:7) and use of this rhetorical device in contemporary Greek literature.
• Still undecided.