Facilitating Online Group Discussions

Lesson Delivery, Digital Learning

Asynchronous Online Discussions

Complementing online asynchronous discussions with synchronous online sessions can help to stimulate more in-depth discussions, as well as help students, apply what they have learned. Through the use of collaborative platforms e.g. eLearn Discussion Forum, Google Docs, students are able to share their opinions and develop arguments in support of such opinions. This approach facilitates in-depth discussions and provides more opportunities for students to apply what they have learned. This blended approach of facilitating both asynchronous and synchronous discussions lends itself well when oral participation in class may be limited.

Here are some practical tips to consider when you facilitate online discussions:

• Set authentic tasks that reflect real-life issues that students can relate to and hence, find it easy to participate in.
• Divide your topics and assign separate readings to small groups of students so that they can contribute confidently to the sub-topics. Create small group discussions to facilitate and monitor the quantity and quality of the contributions. Larger group class discussions tend to discourage reticent students from participating when certain students disproportionately dominate the discussion.
• Assign roles for each student in their respective groups and rotate their roles throughout the course. Possible roles may include:
  • Coordinator: Keeps group focused on the task
  • Counter-advocate: Provides an alternative perspective
  • Moderator: Watches for negative tones and to enhance positive social interaction
• Consider role-playing strategies: Students read and analyse a case related to the course content and assume roles in the case to represent different perspectives of issues. Check in regularly with each group to affirm good ideas or clarify misconceptions.
• Invite groups to comment on at least one other group's posts/ideas (with the view to clarify, challenge, support) and encourage active exchange.
• Questioning: The instructor assumes a challenging stance in the discussion to probe students to think deeper. Questions could be asked in the following manner:
  • “Can you share with us additional readings/ evidence that could be used to support your thinking about …. ?”
  • “What assumptions are you making about ….. ?”
  • “How would your analysis/ interpretation be different with an alternate set of assumptions?”
  • “How might you consider this issue from another perspective and provide an example to clarify it?”
  • Highlight examples of good and average posts/ideas contributed by students from past semesters.

Swapna, from the School of Information Systems, shares her experiences in using online discussion forums:

Swapna GOTTIPATI Assistant Professor of Information Systems (Education)  Interim Associate Dean (Undergraduate Education), SCIS

Online discussion forums are advantageous as they provide an equitable space and flexibility for all students. They offer an alternative means for encouraging interactions between the students and the instructors. I have observed that the students are reluctant to use the discussion forum if it was a mere repetition of the course content. Hence, I’ve come up with a design, where the forum questions prompted students to do research on the topic before participating in the forum. Based on my observations, students found questions related to topics beyond the class, more interesting and this motivated them to be more active in the forum. At the same time forums are the repositories of knowledge. They not only enable collaborative learning but also provide knowledge and ideas for students in their projects and exams. To achieve this collaborative learning, I also summarise weekly discussions and share the learning points with the students.

For more general tips on ‘Designing Effective Online Discussions for Blended Learning’, please access our e-bulletin at this link.

For general tips on ‘Facilitating Class Discussions’, please access this link.

Synchronous Online Discussions

Incorporating small group online discussions in your lesson can be an effective way of increasing interaction and encouraging collaborative learning. Certain online tools are designed to help you for this purpose by allowing you to organise virtual breakout sessions for students to carry out online discussions.

Students usually start in the main meeting room and upon instruction, break up into small groups and gather back for a debrief. The use of these virtual breakout sessions works exactly like physical groups in an offline setting and offer online classroom tools, such as a virtual whiteboard to jot down notes that everyone in the room can see, plus the ability for every member to interact and collaborate possibly on a Google Doc. 

Recommended Tools

Discussions

Discussions tool in eLearn is a course-related collaboration area where you can post, read and reply to messages on different topics, share thoughts about course materials, ask questions, share files, or conduct group discussions for assignments/projects.