The Potential of Threaded Discussion Groups: Reflecting on the First 2 Weeks

Image Courtesy: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/images/articles/main/id_202_608.jpg

After considering multiple perspectives on the usefulness of threaded discussion groups in the English classroom, there appears to be a great deal of potential for this new literacy to enhance the experience of learners in a number of ways. My main goal in exploring threaded discussion groups is to encourage my students to develop into engaged writers who think critically about the literature, topics, and concepts in our curriculum, and to provide a new space for them to authentically respond to the literature and films in our courses. As Cox and Cox (2008) assert, “Discussion is a valuable tool in the teaching process and a discussion board offers students the opportunity to engage in such dialogue” (Cox & Cox, p. 564). In my teaching context, one of the primary obstacles that I encounter in the classroom is a sense of apathy towards learning and education in general, and I believe that many of my students disengage because they don’t find the curriculum meaningful to them or they are intimidated because of past discouraging experiences with school. Many of my students claim to ‘never read’ and ‘never write,’ however, what I am beginning to learn and teach them is that they are reading, writing, and engaging in critical dialogue, just in new literacy contexts, and I am trying to empower them by integrating some of these new literacy practices that they are already using into our curriculum.

I’ve just begun using online threaded discussion groups in my grades nine and eleven classes these past couple of weeks. Here are a few screen shots of the Welcome Page, and the first two discussion topics that students have been working on:

The Welcome Page for English 20-2:  

 Discussion Topic 1: 

Discussion Topic 2: 

When I first started planning for this semester, I thought that I would use TDGs for my grade twelve class, but I’ve decided to only use this new literacy for a portion of the semester, later in the year, because I am concerned about ensuring that these students are prepared for their 50% provincial exams in June. For now, because I feel as though I have no room for ‘error’ with my grade twelves, the experimenting with TDGs will begin in my other classes so I can learn from any hiccups we encounter. A major concern that I have is Knowlton, Knowlton, and Davis’s (2000) assertion that “student interaction is not automatically generated by the use of threaded discussion boards” (Knowlton, Knowlton, & Davis in Cox & Cox, p. 555) and I want to make sure that these discussions are helping to create a meaningful collaborative learning environment. Now that I’ve set up these threaded discussion groups, I need to ensure that I don’t just rely on the students to make it work; I need to strike a balance between facilitating these groups and allowing the students the freedom to make them their own. I believe that if I’m successful in this, these groups can be a space for authentic learning, reflective thinking, risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration.

The first decision that I made was to have the students choose their own groups before I set them up online for threaded discussions. We’ve been doing Project Based Learning work in class already this year, so we’ve had a few conversations already about the importance of considering the peers they will work most effectively with. At first, I was tempted to create their groups for them because I wanted to pair some of the more reluctant students with students who feel confident in the course. However, Chen and Caropeso (2003) show that “personality has a great impact on the quantity and quality of online discussion and group interactions” (Chen & Caropeso in Lee & Lee, p. 84), and I decided to let go and trust them to organize themselves into groups with people they know that they work well with. Now, I am managing thirty different TDGs across four classes. Here is a screen shot of what my “My Groups” page looks like:

Also, I anticipate that we will sometimes be exploring some more sensitive and intense issues in this next semester including self image, bullying, mental health issues, and self harming, so I wanted to ensure that they were in discussion groups with peers that they trusted because as Bowers-Campbell (2011) asserts, “threaded discussions…allow[] for easier discussions of controversial topics” (p. 558). I’ve already encountered some students deciding to re-arrange the original groups they signed up in because, as one student said, “I think I’m more comfortable opening up to just a couple other people in the class instead of five.” One topic that I think I’m going to work on with my grade nines in the coming weeks is digital citizenship, as our community has experienced something of a ‘social media mess,’ as my principal calls it. Students in our community are using an app called “Ask” and posting very hurtful and inappropriate questions anonymously for one another, and it’s snowballed so much so that there was a news story about it. Our admin team has asked all staff to all make sure that we are integrating digital citizenship discussions into our curriculums and so I hope that using TDGs will help the students feel safer to express their thoughts more freely, as Bowers-Campbell suggests.

Also, as a result of this grouping process, the TDGs are comprised of a mixture of students that are both introverted and extroverted learners, and Lee and Lee (2006) argue that this is a positive group composition, as “extroverted learners are motivated by introverted learners’ analytical and thoughtful discussions, while, conversely, introverted learners are inspired by extroverted learners’ spontaneous feedbacks and new ideas” (Lee & Lee, p. 85). What I noticed on our first day of TDGs was that because they chose their own groups, their knowledge of their peers’ personality types certainly allowed the students to jump right into participation in the groups without hesitation. Their groups were physically spread out all over the classroom, so even though they were in discussion groups online, the room was filled with chatter. Students were calling across the room to one another with comments such as “Jill, did you read my post yet?” “Ha; Dayton, I knew you would write about that movie!” and “I’m going to post a link to that video, okay? Check in a second.” What I realized was that I was asking them to continue doing what they already do with regularity; engage in virtual discussion with one another, only this time I had them focused on an English class topic in a threaded discussion as opposed to their usual everyday interactions via texting, Facebook, Snapchat, and various other social media. They already know how to do this.

I decided against using a Moodle forum or Google Hangout Chat because I found that Google Groups are a happy medium. It is easily accessible, more visually engaging than a Moodle forum, but also not overly complicated, which some students find Google Hangout Chat to be. When I showed a couple of my students a Google Hangout and asked if they’d want to be in one, one responded with, “Miss, there’s just a lot going on here.”  Also, Google Groups seems to be the easiest platform for me to use to facilitate, as I can “save” all of their interactions and I came across a very useful document created by my school board, Rocky View Schools, on how to use Google Groups in the classroom:

http://www.rockyview.ab.ca/home/techsupports/google/best-practices/groups

In deciding on assessment for their TDGs, I’ve chosen to use shared evaluation pedagogy (SHEP), as discussed by Aukerman and Walsh (2009) so that the students feel as though their ideas about their learning are being honored and included in assessment. In their article, they discuss how this practice is “by no means a pedagogical free-for-all” but rather, this approach can help students to “become more accountable to the text and to each other” in virtual discussion groups (Aukerman & Walsh, p. 54). I believe that this strategy will help the students understand that they are an authentic audience for one another, and they will hopefully keep one another on task and engaged. I designed peer and self-assessment rubrics along with a rubric for teacher assessment, using resources that I cited in my previous blog post. Here is a screenshot of the assessment rubric I created for me to assess them:

Teacher, self, and peer assessment, and reflections for this project will be completed at the end of each month. 

Although I have only tried TDGs for two weeks, what I have seen so far has been encouraging. Students seem engaged, and I’ve noticed that many students are working on their discussions outside of class time as well. I’ve set up my Google Groups to email me a notification whenever students make a post, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that many students are accessing the groups at home even though I only require them to work on it during our Friday classes. Returning to Cathie English’s (2007) article discussed in my first blog post, I’m certainly finding that she’s right in her assertion that “Online threaded discussion allows the teacher and students to expand the classroom beyond the school day and beyond the school walls so that more thoughtful exchanges can take place” (English, p. 56). I look forward to seeing if students continue to be engaged in the TDGs and after a few weeks, I’m planning on turning the forum over to them, so that they are generating the inquiry questions for our Friday Chats.

Reference List:

Aukerman, M. & Walsh, H.W. (2009). Getting “Real” in Virtual Talk about Text. Middle School Journal, 40(4). 53-61.

Bowers-Campbell, J. (2011). Taking it Out of Class: Exploring Virtual Literature Circles. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(8). 557-567.

Cox, B. & Cox, B. (2008). Developing Interpersonal and Group Dynamics through Asynchronous Threaded Discussions: The Use of Discussion Board in Collaborative Learning. Education, 128(4). 552-565. 

English, C. (2007). Finding a Voice in a Threaded Discussion Group: Talking about Literature Online. English Journal, 97(1). 56-61.

Lee, J. & Lee, Y. (2006). Personality Types and Learners’ Interaction in Web-Based Threaded Discussion. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 7(1). 83-94.