Discussion Questions and Policies

Discussion Boards

The goal of a discussion board in online learning is to increase our understanding of the topic. Whether each of us is a learner or a facilitator, we all learn from each other and the discussion board helps bring us together as a learning community. To meet our goal, our discussion must be meaningful; in other words, our contributions must add new information, ask questions, etc. not just give each other a pat on the back for a good post. To get a good discussion going, you have to have delicious questions.

Susan Lowes, in her NACOL Teacher Talk webinar presentation in April, 2008, described several types of discussion.

• Initiation – Response – Feedback (IRF) – teacher asks, student answers, teacher or other student comments
• Disputational talk – assertion followed by counter-assertion
• Cumulative talk – assertion followed by additional information
  • This is the most frequent type of discussion board interaction
• Exploratory talk – assertion followed by challenge or counter-challenge; new information elaboration or explains; discussion before there is agreement
  • This is the basis for collaborative learning
  • What we all want to happen but rarely does

Lowes goes on to suggest that facilitators use a different type of software for each type of discussion. For example, use the discussion form for exploratory discussions where threading can be helpful and important. For other types of discussion such as introductions, IRF, disputational or cumulative talk, a blog is great because it can be a single page to read. These “lesser” types of discussions don’t really benefit from threading, and might even be hampered by it.

(Lowes, 2008 )

Creating Delicious Questions

In a presentation to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in April, 2006, Bruce Harrison described a method for creating questions that engage all of the students, using the metaphor of serving pizza. The goal of asking questions, he quotes a colleague as saying, is not that learners “figure out what I’m thinking and what I’m looking for. I want just the reverse, for me to try and figure out what they’re thinking.”

He says that delicious questions have three characteristics:

• Require more than recall of facts or reproduction of a skill
• Students can learn by doing, and the teacher learns about the student from their attempt
• There may be more than one acceptable answer

(Harrison, 2006)

The presentation also provides guidance on building delicious questions that meet the characteristics listed above.

Discussions in My Context

In my context as a technical writer creating training materials for an employee training program, I assist trainers in developing discussion questions for their face-to-face classes, not online discussion boards. But the principles of exploratory talk and delicious questions are still highly relevant.

Here’s a couple of examples of delicious questions that I would suggest for my trainers.

1. A customer calls very upset with an ongoing billing problem that he is having. He tells you that he is ready to file a complaint with the Attorney General of his state unless you solve this problem to his satisfaction right now. At the end of the call, he praises you for your resolution, thanks you, and even comments that you’ve made him a loyal customer. How did you handle this customer in order to get to this result?

2. An installer is calling because he is having problems getting the customer’s installation finished. The provisioning server repeatedly refuses his Installer ID. You discover that his ID is expired, and he is no longer authorized to do installations for your company. The customer is confused about how this uncertified installer has been assigned to their account. The installer wants to finish this job so he can be paid for his time and for the equipment he has installed. What are the potential pitfalls along the way to helping both the customer and the installer reach a satisfactory conclusion? What skills will you draw on the most?

Discussion Policies and Assessments

Policies and assessments can also assist in engaging learners in the discussion, either face-to-face or online.  I think that the two are somewhat intermingled in that the policy outlines the expectation for the learner’s behavior, and the assessment evaluates their performance.

A facilitator’s role in a discussion is pivotal, and requires upfront planning. Part of the planning comes in creating delicious questions, and part of it comes in the policy that guides the discussion. Harrison (2006, slide 5) provides some uncited statistics that report 60% of what teachers say are questions, and most are unplanned. Some elementary teachers average 385 questions a day, while their students may only ask 2 questions an hour. This paints a picture of very bland questioning, and little exploratory conversation, even something grade-appropriate.

Lowes (2008 ), in her research on what makes students engage in discussions boards, found that the presence of facilitators didn’t influence the level of participation, but that the content of the posting (by either the student or the facilitator) did. What she found was that discussions where there was a high level of ‘cheerleading’  posts lead to more cheerleading posts, and that posts with questions lead to new information, which lead to more cheerleading. Lowes posits that cheerleading should be banned, but Harrison (participating in this same webinar) stated that he allowed cheerleading, but used his policy to state that those posts did not count towards the student’s grade.

For a face-to-face training class, such as delivered by one of my trainers, I would suggest the following policy:

1.       Always be respectful to your colleagues. Remember that this is a safe environment; that “what happens in Training, stays in Training”. Be patient with those who might find this format challenging.

2.       Participation is mandatory, but no one will call on you. It is your responsibility to contribute where you feel you are able to do so.

3.       If public speaking makes you uncomfortable, try anyway. If that does not work, try something like finding a relevant knowledge base article, or other web page to ‘show and tell’ to the group.

4.       Speak to your colleagues, not just to your trainer. During your employment, you will be working with this group, so use this time to learn each other’s strengths.

5.       Help your colleague ‘dig deeper’ into the topic of the discussion by asking thought-provoking questions. Try taking the opposite position.

6.       Hold your colleague accountable for his or her statements with statements like “What I think I heard you say…” or “Can I sum up your position by saying…” (Harrison, 2006)

7.       As your trainer, I commit to you that I will help the discussion stay on topic and technically accurate, that I will offer additional insights, and that I will allow everyone the opportunity to participate.

For online learning, I would take a slightly different approach. I would use an introduction such as this before the class begins.

Look at the list of discussion questions and vote for the six questions you would like to have the class discuss. The top vote-getting questions will be posted to the forum for this class. We will begin a new question about every other week, but you must continue the other questions as the weeks go on. For example in Week 4, you’ll participate in discussions for Week 1, 2, 3 and 4.

This approach supports adult learners in their need to be self-directing in their study (Knowles, 2005), and because of this, I would expect a higher level of participation especially in  exploratory talk.

Next, I would give my commitment to the learners and set the stage for the policy/assessment rubric. My commitment would look like this:

As your facilitator, I commit to you that I will help the discussion stay on topic and, when appropriate, technically accurate; that I will offer additional insights or present challenges; and that I will encourage strong discussion before we reach consensus. I also commit to you that I will consider myself just as much a learner as you are, deliver the same quality responses as I expect of you, and be open to your review of the contributions I put forward.

(This sounds like one of the “come to Jesus” moments, or perhaps a marriage vow :-) )

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