August 1998 — Features
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Eight Ways to Get Students More Engaged in Online Conferences
5) Structure the activity. Give students guideposts to help them think of things to say that are academically meaningful. Choice of topics has a great deal of influence here. Topics should be organized around an academic theme that serves course objectives. Topics should not be so open-ended that students digress. You can go further by creating activities that are best performed in a structured way. For example, debates can be structured by requiring students to post a position, to which others respond with pro or con supporting arguments, followed by critique of the arguments. Or brainstorming can be structured by having students first generate a list of alternatives; re-think the list by creating new ordering, structure, or relationships, systematically evaluating each item to produce a "short list" of viable alternatives; and then reaching consensus decision on the best choices, followed by prioritization.[11]
6) Require a hand-in assignment (deliverable). To extend structuring to its logical conclusion, you should require students to do something besides just express ideas and opinions. They should produce a deliverable from the conference. This kind of activity capitalizes on all the advantages of constructivist theory, which holds that students learn best when they have to integrate, synthesize and apply information by creating a deliverable piece of work. Such a deliverable can include idea generation and analysis, decisions, plans and designs, proposals, case studies, problem solution, research projects, term papers or reports, portfolios or role playing. These activities are not supported well by the typical threaded-topic software, but they are in FORUM, which not only supports group-based electronic publications but also allows students to create links to ideas, files and graphics in context with specific character strings or objects within a shared document.
7) Know what you are looking for and involve yourself to help make it happen. Irrespective of the specific learning activity, the teacher should know what quality work is and should intervene as the work is being developed to steer students in the right direction. When the teacher participates in a conference, providing extensive critique, feedback, and encouragement, students cannot help but become more involved.
8) Peer grading. Tell students at the beginning of the conference that at the end of the activity they will be asked to rate each other on the value of each person's contribution. This can be a powerful incentive for students to do quality work in the conference. However, most of the students that I encounter do not like to grade each other. This is especially a problem if they have bonded as a result of operating in a learning team. In that case, they may want to give everybody an A, even when some students made distinctly greater contributions to the conference. Problems also arise by having them rank each other, because they might think that rank 1 gets an A, rank 2 gets a B, and the lower ranked students will get a failing grade. One possible solution is to have students grade the contributions of another group, which also gives them added learning experiences. Another possibility is to structure the ratings so that they don't translate directly into A, B, C, etc.
