 |
Physical Resources |
| Applying Technology to Teaching | ||||||||||||
Facilitating Collaborative Learning Using Discussion Forums
Begin with Algonquin's Own Tip Sheets for Creating and Assessing Discussion Forums. Don't forget our own tip sheets for enhancing communication options with your students. These tipsheets cover a variety of topics including
You can find these tipsheets on the Blackboard Support page. Just click on either Resources for Faculty or Resources for Students. "Crafting Questions for Online Discussions" from Penn State gives you tips for continuing your classroom discussions after the "class" is over. Great communication ideas for novice discussion forum users. "Common uses of Online Discussions" Again from the Teaching and Learning with Technology unit at Penn State, this page offers many ideas for using discussion forums as communication tools, just substitute "Blackboard" for "Angel." It includes a set of guidelines, as well as examples of interesting discussion forum activities. Four Roles for Online Facilitators: Zane Berge has written a classic on four roles for online facilitators: pedagogical, social, technical and managerial. He, along with Mauri Collins, is also the host of emoderators.com, a good source of many articles relating to online discussion forums. Five Levels of Interactivity in Online Discussion Forums: This article called "Models of Collaboration" describes five levels of interactivity in online discussion forums, moving from the library model to the process support model (nice diagrams to illustrate each one!). Online Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: This entire web site, hosted by Central Queensland University is "devoted to world's best practice in online collaborative learning in higher education, and related topics: here you'll find links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information. We hope that the information provided here will be of use to researchers and practitioners working in this area. " An excellent comprehensive web site that is constantly adding new online resources. Don't Forget Your E-Mail. Even with discussion forums, you will still get lots of e-mail! "Managing Your E-Mail Traffic" provides useful e-mail tips and strategies for faculty, including good advice for managing the volume of your e-mail traffic.
|
||||||||||||
Two of the most useful features of Blackboard are the discussion board and the group discussion board. They let you communicate with your students outside of class, and they let students collaborate with one another on out-of class activities.