Title: Online discussions
Course: Digivisio - DEMO course template > Section: Activating learners

Online discussions are very commonly used task type in e-learning. Usually, “online discussions” refers to asynchronous discussions, where the participants contribute at different times, using for example a discussion forum. This differentiates online discussion from synchronous discussions, such as chats, where the participants contribute at the same time.

Why online discussions?

- Flexibility of time and place – online discussions should have some schedule, though
- Learners have time to formulate their answers
- Enables everybody’s participation, easier for learners with social anxiety
- You can refer back to the discussions

How should online discussions be used?

As with the other tasks, start planning from the learning goals of the course. What are the learners learning from this discussion? How to define something? How to apply something? How to analyse something? Write this very clearly in the task instructions.

Sometimes learners feel there are too many online discussions in a course. Think carefully when to use them: they are easy and quick to create, but the teacher also should give feedback on the discussions. This can be done collectively, with the teacher collecting ideas from the discussion and giving feedback as a summary to the entire group as once.

Groups or not?

In many e-learning environments, it is possible to divide learners into groups, and this can also be used in online discussions. Instead of having the entire group of 50 learners in the same discussion, divide them into 10 smaller groups and the group members only see the messages of their own group. This enables more learners to participate, since in the larger groups the final participants tend to just say “I agree” without actually giving any thoughts of their own. You can also tell the groups that you will let them see the replies from the other groups after a deadline, which enables the groups to learn from one another.

Informal discussions

A common way to use online discussions is to start the course with introductions: who are we, what do we want to learn? You should always initiate the discussion by introducing yourself. If possible, other media besides text can also be used: videos, add an interesting picture to the text etc. In general, learning should contain informal discussion as well, as it helps the learners to get to know each other and builds trust both between the learners and towards the teacher.

Future.org has good instructions on how to organise online discussions.